


Lingering Fear

by reapergrimm



Category: Kim Possible (Cartoon)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-16
Updated: 2019-06-06
Packaged: 2019-11-19 07:12:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 27,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18132584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reapergrimm/pseuds/reapergrimm
Summary: There was a time before Kim Possible. Before Drakken. This is a tale of Shego's early days as a mercenary. Before fame found her and she remade herself as a master criminal. But someone from her old days as a hero remembers her. And desires one more dance in the darkness. A prequel to the Kim Possible series as a whole and "A Possible Reunion".





	1. Chapter 1

**Chapter One**

_The usual boilerplate disclaimer. I do not own Kim Possible. Kim Possible is the intellectual property of the Walt Disney Corporation and the creation of Bob Schooley and Mark McCorkle_

The sun shone brightly in the clear sky and the smell of the ocean wafted over the beaches into the reception area of the La Perla Azul Resort. Everybody in the room were what the average person would expect from a high-end resort in Cancun, well-to-do American tourists who would only see the idyllic beaches and quaint venues. Everybody, that is, save for one raven haired woman in a green dress wearing a sunhat and sunglasses.

There was a confidence to her. A feeling that only came with being the most dangerous person in the room, since there was never any competition. Thankfully for the other patrons. But Shego wasn't there on assignment. For the next week, she could just lay about on the beach being pampered by cabana boys. And forget about working for Gemini and his Worldwide Empire of Evil. 

The idiot didn't even seem to realize that his organization was abbreviated to WEE. Gemini paid well, but his methods were completely out there. He prided himself on being this serious threat to the world, but he was just so... silly. Between that neurotic little rat Pepe that he spoiled like a small child and how he kept “firing” anyone who so much as slighted him, it was no wonder that he wasn't making the news. Shego genuinely believed he only had his reputation due to him being the twin brother to Dr. Director, the leader of Global Justice.

But, a reputation was what Shego needed right now. So she toughed it out. But a change needed to happen soon. So for now, she took their money. And because she was smart enough to have a contract drawn up, she got vacation time, unlike all of those other brainless drones. So Shego was going to take some time off to think about her future. 

“Hello, Miss. Welcome to La Perla Azul resort. How may I help you?” said the girl at the receptionist's desk.

“Yeah. I have a reservation. I'm Natasha Drago. I booked a room here a month ago.”

“I see, Miss Drago. Let me just check our files... Yes, we have you booked in a deluxe room with a beach view.”

“It's not too high up, is it? My line of work... requires me to be ready to be on the move in a moment's notice.”

“Not at all, miss. It's only on the third floor, per your request. It's also a respectful distance from the elevator lobby and any ice machines.”

“Perfect.”

“Here's your room key, you have have the room for a week, extensions are available if your plans change and enjoy your stay at La Perla Azul.”

As if on cue, a bellhop came to the front desk to help Shego with her bags. She didn't have much, just two suitcases and a duffel bag. Still, she was here to be pampered. He followed her with the suitcases in tow as she carried the duffel bag and the trip to the third floor was quiet. Until they actually arrived. 

A young girl, possibly eight years old, came barrelling into the elevator, her mother running frantically to catch up with her. “Sweetie, you can't just barge into elevators like that! It's rude and more importantly, you could have gotten hurt!”

“I'm sorry, mommy. I just really want to get to the beach!”

“I'm so sorry, ma'am,” The mother practically begged Shego.

“It's... it's okay,” Shego brushed off the whole situation and did her best to not let her actual emotions show.

After a brief sojourn down the hallway, Shego and the bellhop arrived at her room. As Shego dropped her duffel onto her bed, she stepped over to the balcony to look out at the beach. The bellhop set aside her luggage beside the bed, and began to address her.

“So, you've got your minibar over here, fees apply for anything you take. Your phone is over here with the number for room service. And if you have any further questions about what our resort can provide for you, our front desk will be more than happy to answer your concerns.”

He then stood at the doorway, silent, as though expecting something. The silence grew until he began to cough. With a disgusted grunt, Shego took out her wallet and practically threw a $20 bill his way.

“Thank you, ma'am! Enjoy your stay!” The bellhop cheered.

“Just leave,” Shego said with her back turned to the doorway. 

As the door closed behind him, Shego exited the room and headed out to the balcony. She sat down in a wicker chair in a corner. She had hoped to quickly change and hit the beach to soak up some sun, but she was no longer in the mood. Nothing the bellhop had done, though. It was that little girl and her mother from the elevator. They made her... remember. She hated having her mind wander back to that time.

“She would be about eight now herself... Huh. I wonder if she would have liked this sort of trip,” Shego mused.

Shego sat back in her chair, but couldn't relax. Her thoughts kept going back to that night, five years ago. Five years. It had been five years ago this past November that Shego had left Go City. Left everything behind. Including her daughter.

.....

“Agni...”

The image was burned into her memory. Some things, you will never forget. Things like seeing your 3-year-old daughter's broken body in a cast, hooked up to life-support machines. The dark hospital room softly lit up by the dull, flickering lights from the medical equipment. 

“They say that her glow is what saved her. That the trauma caused it to manifest for the first time,” A hoarse, throaty voice said behind Shego as she just stared at her child's hospital bed while sitting in one of those uncomfortable hospital chairs.

Shego couldn't even be bothered to turn her head to look her mother in the eye. All she could do was just look at her baby. The little girl she failed. 

“I wasn't... I wasn't fast enough. I couldn't get there in time.”

“You and I both know that this happened because of your own irresponsibility,” Roza tersely stated. She gently placed some of her loose, graying hair back over her right ear, bringing it into like with the plait draped over her shoulder. 

“Mother, not _now!_ ” Shego was not in the mood for her mother's brutal lectures.

“Yes, now. This is a consequence of _your_ decisions. You chose to sleep around. To spite Viktor. To spite me. And because of your short-sighted youth, you wound up with child. You chose to keep her. You chose to continue your... activities with your brothers,” Roza stepped forward to Agni's bed, placing her hand on the side rail before turning around to face Shego.

“Did it seriously never cross your mind that one of your enemies would decide that rather than going after you for revenge, they would instead go after those closest to you?” What little light there was in the room reflected off the monocle on her left eye. The effect, combined with her usually cold demeanour always made her seem even more robotic.

“Shut it!” Shego started to yell, before remembering where she was.

“No. Despite Viktor's claims, your little tower is _not_ an impenetrable fortress. That much is obvious to everybody now. Except... maybe to Viktor himself. He always did choose to live in an isolated little bubble, completely divorced from how the world works around him. Choosing to convince himself that his life is like one of those childish superhero comics,” Roza spoke coldly. 

Shego couldn't argue with that. Hego always did act like he was the hero in some cheesy cartoon. And what he _said_ when he found out what happened... he was lucky he could take a plasma blast as well as he could. Thankfully, the twins and even Mego had talked him out of his short-sightedness. One thing was clear. Agni couldn't stay in Go Tower anymore.

“I think... some arrangements need to be made. For Agni's safety. And her future,” Shego said in a defeated tone.

“Oh? And what, pray tell, would that be?” Roza was always good at hiding her emotions. But for a moment, it seemed like her emotionally dead facade cracked a small bit.

“If people are going to take revenge against me by using Agni... well, I better not give them a reason to seek revenge in the first place.”

“Natasha, what are you planning?” Shego honestly couldn't tell if her mother was concerned or curious at this point.

.....

A seagull's cry snapped Shego out of her recollection. Sighing, she rubbed the bridge of her nose. This is not what she wanted to do on her vacation. Composing herself, she opened her suitcase and pulled out her bathing suit.

“Time to relax and lose myself in some sun,” Shego's tone told the tale that nobody was around to hear. She was trying to fool herself.

.....

“Dave, I blame you for this,” said the teenage black-haired teenage girl in a blue sweater and khaki pants while she ducked a massive stony fist that swung over her head.

“How is this lunatic summoning Grudgliks _my_ fault, Jen?” Replied a young man with short, messy brown hair in a red superhero t-shirt. He also wore a brown leather jacket and blue jeans. He winced as he popped his head out from behind a pillar.

“Well, for one thing, I didn't have to battle demons before you came into my life.” 

Jen dodged to her left as the foul Grudglik pounded the floor with both of it's fists hard enough to crack the concrete. With its hands in the crater, Jen ran up the rocky beast's arms to get at its exposed brain. As the beast's porcine head squealed with fury, Jen sunk her combat knife into its grey matter.

“You might have figured out the Grudglik's weakness by dumb luck, Jen Credible, but even you cannot best their power!” Shouted the figure in a purple hood and cloak at the centre of the abandoned warehouse. What little of his face that could be seen was yellow and scaly with a black goatee on his chin. Glowing red eyes leered out from the shadows of the hood.

“Seriously Pazuzu?! They don't have the top half of their skulls! It doesn't matter if the rest of their bodies are made of stone, that is a _glaring_ weak point only the blind could miss!” Shouted Jen as she pulled her knife out of the dead Grudglik's head, jumping off its body as it faded away before it could hit the ground. “And that cheap latex mask isn't fooling anyone, you nutcase! You're just as human as the rest of us!” 

“A mistake of nature I shall soon correct. All it will take are the right amount of tributes to my namesake and this mortal form shall be discarded like the trash it is! And I. Will. Not. LET YOU STOP ME! GRUDGLIKS! TURN HER INTO PASTE!!!”

The glyph on the floor glowed a dim purple. The illumination reached out like grasping tendrils and tethered itself to his hands. As he collected the magical energy from the rune painted on the floor of the abandoned warehouse, two more Grudgliks manifested into reality amid bright violet light. The stony demons towered over Jen at least double her height, their long, ape-like arms supported their bulky humanoid torsos but cloven hooves were firmly planted on the ground.

“You know, there is such a thing as 'buyer beware',” Jen quipped as she dove between the legs of the first Grudglik to position herself between the two demons.

“Just because something looks cool doesn't mean it's practical. I mean, seriously...” Jen darted sideways to let the second Grudglik smash the first in its right side and across the warehouse. “If I didn't know any better, I'd swear these things had rocks for brains.”

“You think you can keep this up, Credible? Your luck can't hold out forever!” Pazuzu cried out venomously as once again he channelled the magical energy of the rune.

“Oh, I don't rely on just luck. Skill is a big part of it,” Jen said as she circled around the Grudglik to get onto its back. Despite its thrashing, Jen was able to get up to its head and stab it in the brain. “Though, I have to admit, having friends help too.”

“Friends?” Pazuzu puzzled over Jen's comment. Until he realized he had lost sight of Dave. Before he knew what happened, a sharp pain struck Pazuzu in the back of his left knee. Just as he began to turn his head backwards, he saw a chunk of loose concrete closing in on his head.

With a loud _thwack_ , Pazuzu crumpled to the ground. Dave stood over his body with a confident smirk on his face. He dropped the chunk of concrete, knelt down and spoke to the summoner's unconscious face, “And just because the girl beating the tar out of your little pets seems like the immediate threat, doesn't mean she's the one you should focus on.”

With its summoner unconscious, the remaining Grudglik vanished into thin air. The rune stopped glowing, and faded away as well. Jen immediately dropped to her knees with exhaustion now that there were no enemies around, her muscles aching all over her body, she dropped down to the ground, her face to the ceiling.

“I don't know if I'll ever get used to this,” Jen moaned in a tired voice.

“You bluffed him pretty good, though. 'Skill is a big part of it'? Big talk for a rookie who's only a hobbyist kick-boxer,” Dave said as he took out his cell phone.

Jen sighed. “You know the cops won't help us. Let alone believe us.”

“Not calling them. Our friends at GJ.”

“And they're any better?”

“They may deny the kinds of things we stumble across, but Dr. Director recognizes that our enemies are too dangerous to be left on the streets. Even if she insists that they use “unknown science” instead of magic.”

“It'd be great if GJ would just lock them away somewhere instead of just putting pressure on the LDPD to imprison our rogues,” Jen pondered.

“Yeah. It... would... be... _JEN!!!_ ” Dave shouted as he gripped the sides of his head.

Jen bolted up at Dave screaming her name. His visions were never pleasant. Either to watch, or for him to go through - but this... this was just WRONG. Dave was on all fours, coughing up what appeared to be tar, but just as soon as the sludge hit the ground, it seemed to dissolve into black smoke. Jen raced towards her friend, and placed herself right beside him.

“ _DAVE?!_ Oh, holy... What's wrong?! What's happening to you?!” Jen cried out.

As Jen cupped her hands around Dave's face to rise it up to get a good look at him, she jolted back in shock. His eyes were solid black. Splotches of darkness bubbled out of his tear ducts and rose up into the air, his skin turning a dull, ashen grey. When Jen worked up the courage to touch him again, she realized that he was as cold as stone.

“Oh, no...”

.....

The screams of little children floated by in the wind. _I want my mommy... Where's my family?!... It's so cold... No more pain! NO MORE PAIN!!!_ The images that flashed before Dave's mind were no better. A ruined, filthy school. Little girls, lost in the dark hallways. Monsters of all kinds stalking the grounds. Zombies. Walking masses of tumorous flesh. Vermin skittering around the desolation. So much fear in the air. And at the end of the halls, a dim green light. The darkness seemed to shoot past Dave as if he were being catapulted towards the illumination. 

As he got closer, the green light swelled up into a raging emerald inferno. And past the blaze, was a hideous inhuman eye. Violet sclera surrounded a golden iris. But the pupils were what confirmed the alien nature of the eye. A black, inverted Y in the centre of the iris. But in each third of the iris was an additional circular pupil. When it noticed Dave, it looked right at him and it was almost like it was speaking to his very soul.

.....

**“This is your invitation. Do not dawdle. Oh. And do bring young Jennifer with you. The more the merrier.”**

As Dave drew closer, the inverted Y opened up like the maw of a great leech. As Dave fell into the toothy abyss, his eyes adjusted. He was floating above a frozen city in ruins, somewhere on the coast. The whole thing was grey, as if colour seemed had somehow drained out of the surroundings. As if the world was in grey-scale. It took him a while to realize where he was, but when Dave looked out into the inky black sea, he saw a collapsed tower on a small island. Broken vertically in half was Go Tower. Then, like as if he was on a bungee cord, he was ripped out of the ruined city. Back out of the “mouth” of the eye, past the green fire, through the desolate school and the sobbing wind.

.....

“ **DAVE!!!** ” Jen's voice could be heard as Dave started to see light again. As warmth began to return to his body, Dave could feel the crud left over in his lungs. 

“ _Huek! Hack!_ ” Dave coughed up what little tar was left in his system. “Ooh... That was bad... Like, horrifically bad.”

“Yeah, well it wasn't exactly fun and games on this end! What WAS that?!” Jen asked with concern. “You've never done... _THAT_ before!” 

“I'd like to see you handle an Outsider turning _your_ brain into a video conference,” Dave said sardonically. 

“Huh?”

“This time something actually spoke to me. And if that _thing_ is any indication of what gives me my visions... guh.” Dave shuddered at the implications.

Jen fidgeted, hesitant to ask the important questions. “So... where are we going now? What's the monster of week this time?”

“Ugh... I don't know. All I saw was... darkness. Ruin. And all I could feel was dread.”

“Oh. How... _wonderful_.” Jen sighed dejectedly.

“But I do know where we're going. Go City. Thankfully, we won't have to leave California for this one,” Dave stood up as he stretched his muscles.

“Well, thank heaven for small miracles. It's not like I have school this week. Or homework due tomorrow!” Jen snarked.

“You'd think teachers would cut you some slack for saving the world from being consumed by darkness.”

“Yeah, right. What kind of teacher would be that understanding?”

The half-mumbling of 'The Great Pazuzu' snapped both Jen and Dave's attention to the unconscious summoner as he babbled in his dreams. Sighing, Jen said “Well, what are we supposed to do with him? Can't leave him here, he'll escape.”

“This is why I started keeping rope in my car,” Dave started to walk to the entrance. “Lord knows it wasn't seeing any use in my bedroom.”

“Shut up,” Jen half-laughed as she chucked some pebbles at Dave. Who dodged them as he walked outdoors.

**Author's Notes**

**So this is the start of a new story. Multiple chapters this time. And with the added benefit that it's all planned out to boot! So I'm hoping the updates will be regular. We'll be seeing more of Jen Credible and Dave Seer here, as well as Agni and an old foe. Many thanks to both Blackbird and Festum for giving me their permission to use their characters Jen Credible, Dave Seer, Pazuzu, the Grudgliks, Agni and Roza Drago for this story. I just couldn't pass up the opportunity. This is the start of a combined continuity featuring characters from both Small Surprises, Big Consequences and Maternal Instinct.**

**This whole project is something I'm doing as a practice run to write original fiction some day. Get a hang of planning out stories, writing them, editing them, and ultimately publishing them. Many thanks to my editor, “Diana” for all her work on this chapter.**


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

_The usual boilerplate disclaimer. I do not own Kim Possible. Kim Possible is the intellectual property of the Walt Disney Corporation and the creation of Bob Schooley and Mark McCorkle._

_Jen Credible, Dave Seer and Rose Riccaro are the creations of Blackbird. Agni Drago, Cassandra King, Mrs. Turler and the Bogeyman are the creations of Trackula/Festum._

Agni Drago was keeping to herself as she headed towards the cafeteria. Ever since she started school, way back in kindergarten, she'd been stuck here, at the _Go Academy for Gifted Women_. Despite the school uniform's grey blazer and blue skirt, she felt like she was wearing a prison uniform.

With her pale skin, distinguished beauty mark under her left eye and shoulder-length ebony hair, some people said she looked like a vampire. Her skin was the main problem for her when it came to school, however, for it wasn’t just pale, it was a bleached green, emphasized by her vivid green eyes. She often decorated her hair with criss-crossed green ribbons and hair tubes because, well, why not? There wasn’t any hiding her real colour, and it wasn’t like she could help it. Fortunately, or unfortunately, people just assumed she was anaemic. Regardless, the other girls at the school were quick to ostracize the short, “sickly” girl.

Of course, eventually some got it into their heads that they should also harass the ill girl. But the joke was on them. For despite her appearance, Agni was healthier than a girl her age and small stature should be. A side benefit of inheriting her mother's glow was that Agni possessed a boosted healing factor along with enhanced physical endurance and stamina. 

Agni was doing very well in gym class as a result. Even if she did restrain herself in order to avoid giving away just exactly who her actual family was. If that wasn't enough, she worked hard to maintain a decent grade average. She didn't need to have the headache that came with getting low grades at a fancy school such as Go Academy. 

This led to a fair amount of the other girls starting to resent Agni. Not only was she a “little freak”, she showed up a fair amount of the other students enough to make them dislike her. In their jealousy, they would attempt to salvage their wounded pride through bullying tactics. It was small stuff at first. Other girls would leave the table when Agni would sit down for lunch, snickering as she passed them in the halls, and of course, just plain excluding her from joining any social clique.

They lost their mettle pretty quickly when Agni proved she was willing and able to hold her ground against her would-be tormentors. But a few of the girls at this ivory purgatory liked a challenge. It became a game to them, finding ways to push Agni's buttons more and more until she finally snapped, but Agni wasn't going to give them the satisfaction of winning.

As she approached the cafeteria doors, Agni stopped to look around. She couldn't _see_ them, but she'd learned by this point to keep her guard up, so as she crossed the threshold, she kept her eyes peeled for anything coming from the sides. Her vigilance paid off, as a child's leg, clad in knee socks and Mary Jane shoes propped itself in her path. 

Agni deftly hopped over the leg as it came her way. As soon as she was past the leg, she turned around, and to nobody's surprise, there were Cassandra King and her lackeys. Cassandra had a smug look of superiority on her face. It was practically her default expression. If it weren't for that smugness plastered on her face, Cassandra could be the poster child for being a sweet little angel, fair skin, icy blue eyes and pale, blonde hair. Agni thought she looked more like Lucifer than anything else.

At her sides were her two cronies, Grace Blackwood and Shelly Wolfe. Grace was a girl who had a healthy tan and was tall for their age with brown hair tied back into a ponytail. Her hazel eyes were sharp and condescending, making her face look almost hawk-like. Shelly was the same size as Cassandra, but had long, limp red hair with blue eyes and freckles. 

“Really, King? That's all you got?” Agni said dismissively as she turned around to continue into the cafeteria.

Cassandra scowled at Grace and Shelly. She then composed herself and proceeded to address Agni. “So sorry, Drago, we were just stretching. It helps to have a little exercise before eating, don't you know?”

“I'll bet,” Agni said as she got into the lunch line. She hadn't forgotten all the times she wasn't able to dodge these kinds of 'exercises'. It took her some time to develop the skills to avoid these humiliations. The trips, the other girls ganging up on her during gym and pelting her with dodgeballs or volleyballs. Not to mention the various booby-traps on her locker and attacks on her homework.

Cassandra and her friends got in line behind Agni. “Well, it helps to stay healthy. Of course, you wouldn't exactly know about that, what with all the food you scarf down.”

“I have a high metabolism.” Agni wasn't lying. She was so lean due to her glow burning away any excess fat she might have developed as she grew. Sometimes she had to eat extra food, just to stay healthy.

“Is _that_ what you're calling it? I heard that you have intestinal problem. That you can't properly digest most foods. That you have to... _relieve_ yourself quite often.” Cassandra smirked.

Agni sighed. “Potty jokes? Have you run out of all your insults that you'd have to stoop so low?” she said as she kept her back turned to Cassandra. Now that they could no longer physically harass Agni, it seemed like Cassandra was so desperately looking for a new way to torment her that she would try anything. 

“Are you denying it?” Cassandra sneered.

“I'm _ignoring_ it.” 

“Oh, _really?_ Then can you ignore this?” Cassandra leered at her. “I hear that your mother works as _entertainment_ for men down by the waterfront,” she said with venom in her voice.

That got Agni's attention. “What. Did. You. _Say?_ ” she snarled through clenched teeth as she tightened her grip on her lunch tray. Agni always could handle the rumour mill better than the physical tricks, but her home life was off limits. Her _mom_ was off limits.

“Oh, did I touch a nerve? Or did you think we wouldn't find out? Your dear, sweet old grandparents don't have the money to send you here, right? I mean, the only way for them to afford tuition for this place is if someone in your family was doing something... _illicit_ to make up the difference.” Cassandra looked triumphant.

Agni could feel her blood boiling. It was the same feeling she got whenever she was about to flare up her plasma. She had to keep it under control. If Grandma Roza found out she lit up at school...

“Of course, we always knew something was off about you, _charity case_. I mean, seriously...”

Cassandra couldn't finish her line of thought as Agni spun around and whacked Cassandra's head up the left side with the lunch tray. “You. Need to. _Shut. Up_ ” Agni growled to Cassandra, who was lying on the floor.

Everybody in the cafeteria stopped what they were doing and let out a collective gasp. Some people even dropped their lunch trays. In the dead silence, Agni kicked Cassandra with her right foot and made her face upwards. She then placed her left foot on Cassandra's chest and leaned down, resting her arms on her left leg.

“I don't care _who_ you are, what kind of _garbage_ you say about me, or _what_ kind of money your family throws around. _Nobody_ bad mouths my mom.” Agni tersely stated to Cassandra's shocked face.

The murmuring of the students in the cafeteria snapped Agni out of her anger. It suddenly dawned on her that while she hadn't lit up, she was still in a lot of trouble. She stepped over Cassandra, still lying on the floor and headed straight out into the hallways. The other students immediately started to gossip about what had just happened while Grace and Shelly went to help Cassandra up.

As she struggled to stand, a manic little smile crept it's way onto Cassandra's face. “I've got you now, Drago.” She looked at her flunkies and gave the order. “Go find Mrs. Turler. She's been waiting for this for some time.”

.....

Shego dried her wet hair with an ivory towel as she strolled out of the steam-filled hotel bathroom in a fluffy white bathrobe. She needed a nice, relaxing shower after spending the morning in the resort's fitness centre. The attention she got from the head trainer was nice as well. She toyed with his expectations for a bit, but ultimately let him down. Shego wasn't 100% over her memories about Agni from when she arrived two days ago. Besides, Shego always preferred to be the one to initiate those kinds of conversations.

Putting her right hand on the back of her neck and rubbing it as she rolled it Shego headed towards her queen sized bed. She lay down to relax and looked for the remote for the wide-screen television mounted on the wall. Turning on the TV, she flipped through the channels until she came across an interesting news story about some teen superhero who had saved a Brittina concert after a fire broke out backstage.

“What kind of name is Kim Possible anyway?” Shego asked incredulously.

Not long after she spoke those words, a light knocking happened at the door. Shego initially ignored the faint rapping from the hallway, but even as she raised the volume on the television the person outside would not stop knocking. After a certain point, it felt as if the knocks were ringing inside her own head.

“ENOUGH!” Shego hollered. “Can't you see the notice on the doorknob?! It says _DO. NOT. DISTURB!!!_ ” she yelled as she moved towards the room door.

But when she opened the door, there was nobody there. Shego put her head out in the hallway and looked down the corridor both ways, but saw no trace of anyone. As she stepped forward, her toes came into contact with something cool on the carpet. At her feet was a solid black envelope sealed with grey wax.

As she picked up the envelope, she turned it around as she closed the door and headed back inside her room. In scratchy white letters were the words **_Your Invitation_**. A pit began to form in the bottom of Shego's stomach. Those were the types of letters _HE_ used. Something wasn't right about this.

What was inside the envelope made Shego lose all strength in her legs as she fell down to her knees. Her hands were shaking as her eyes became fixated on the image of the picture in front of her. It was a black and white photo of Agni in her school uniform. But her eyes and mouth were blacked out. And surrounding her were more scratchy white letters with a chilling message.

_**Did you think you could hide her from me?** _

Shego's mind was racing. “NonononononoNONONONONO- **NO!!!** ”

Panic running through her mind, Shego pulled out her suitcase from under the bed. She rummaged through her clothes until she found her catsuit. With great hurry, Shego tore off her bathrobe and immediately started to put on her usual mission wear. She then ferociously started tearing through her possessions looking for her WEE communicator.

Once she found, she flipped it on. A deep baritone voice spoke on the other end. “Agent Theta speaking. What do you need, Agent Alpha?”

“CRAM IT WITH THE AGENT ALPHA! I need transportation from Cancun to Go City. NOW!!!” Shego barked with impatience. Though if there was anybody who knew her well enough, they would realize that there was a great deal of anxiety in her voice. 

.....

A black convertible with its top up drove down the highway during the sunny California afternoon. It had been about three hours since Jen and Dave had left Los Diablos to head south to Go City to face the “darkness and ruin” from Dave's vision. Dave was sitting in the driver's seat while Jen was in the back seat with her homework spread out over the back of the car.

“Ugh,” Jen groaned. “I don't understand why they insist on giving us these college-level physics assignments. I'm not going to become a physicist when I graduate.”

“The American education system is messed up in some places. They place more emphasis on the hard sciences than actual practical life skills. When I graduated high school, I wasn't interested in going to college just because it _was_ expected of me. I liked working on cars. So I got a job as a mechanic. It suits me. My time in shop class was more beneficial to me in the long run than anything I learned in physics class,” Dave said.

“And _my_ school just cut both home ec. class and shop class completely out of the budget. So a lot of kids won't have those options anymore,” sighed Jen.

“And what is it _you_ want to do, Jen?”

“I've always been interested psychology. So my biology class is a must. A little bit of chem class too. Yet they insist on saddling me with _physics_ as well. To 'cover my bases'.”

Jen shuffled her papers into her backpack and leaned back into her seat. “Honestly though, the way this keeps going, I feel like _I'm_ the one who will need professional help instead of administering it. I mean, you and have been working together for what, about six months now?”

“Just about.” Dave said with his eyes on the road.

“And the things we've seen in that time... sometimes I wonder if I've fallen through the looking glass.” Jen tilted her head in Dave's direction and looked at him. “But what happened to you in the warehouse... you haven't said much about it. About what you actually saw. You know I'm here for you, right?”

Dave, keeping his focus on his driving simply said, “I don't really want to talk about it, Jen. If I didn't get such massive headaches from my usual visions, I might be tempted to... lose myself in something from what I saw today.”

The car grew quiet for a moment. After a certain point, the silence became too much. “You know what we need right now, Jen? Some tunes.” Dave said as he fiddled with the car radio in the hopes of cheering up the atmosphere.

As Dave tuned into various radio broadcasts, snippets of different news stories could be heard. Smarty Mart had just won the award for most accessible retail store chain and Beuno Nacho had just officially accomplished the consumerist dream of having a restaurant in every country on the planet. But the one that stood out was about a young new superhero who had saved a South American village from a flood despite the piranha infested waters.

“Didn't you say you had a cousin named --?” he asked, turning into another station.

“--Kim Possible?” She finished for him. “Yeah.” Jen shrugged. “She's been modest about it, though... don't really know how to break it her about the stuff we do.” 

She reached over and lightly slapped his hand away from the dial. “All Kim's done is perform rescue missions and combat natural disasters. I just hope she never gets in too deep against something she can't handle.” She said with a concerned voice.

“Your family is something else, Jen.” Dave said with a chuckle.

“Yeah... I got to give props to my dad. He helped me settle things with the school on such short notice so I could head down to Go City for a couple of days,” Jen said as she kicked her backpack. “Which is why I have such a mountain of homework to wrangle with.”

“He does good work given that we only had a couple of days to get everything ready. And your friend Rose was a big help too.”

There was no denying that. Rose Riccaro was her best and only friend until Dave entered her life. Ever since then, Rose had been smoothing things over on the school front and helping Jen stay on course in regards to the massive amount of homework she kept wracking up as she missed more and more school. She even took the “weird stuff” pretty well. Better than Jen expected anyone to in regards to finding out that the supernatural is real.

As the car advanced towards Go City, the sign for the city limits grew closer. But just as they were about to enter the city proper, the skies darkened and thunder rolled. It seemed isolated to a certain section of the city, however. And as they grew closer, they could almost swear tendrils of shadow were descending from the clouds to touch the ground.

Jen sighed. “Darkness and ruin, huh?”

“Yep.”

“... _Joy_.”

.....

The cold desert night sky was tranquil. Serene. But on the horizon, a distant roaring could be heard. The roaring came to a head, and, if you happened to be someone with a keen eye and ear, you would realize that the roar was in fact a young woman zooming over the landscape on a state-of-the-art burgundy hover bike stamped with the WEE logo, her long, black hair whipping out behind her like a dangerous storm cloud.

She couldn't get a flight to Go City to arrive fast enough, not since those fanatical lunatics who flew those planes into the heart of downtown New York this past September. So Shego had “requisitioned” a WEE hoverbike to get from Cancun to California. Gemini would probably have her hide for this, but he was seriously at the bottom of Shego's priorities right now.

“It can't be him! It _CAN'T!!!_ ” She thought.

Her mind raced. Between that photograph at her hotel room and all the thoughts that had shot through her head since then, the only thing that she could really think about were the memories of that fateful night. The night she had come home to Go Tower. When she went to her daughter's room to say good night to her sleeping child she had found her room ransacked, her stuffed toys slashed to ribbons. Those same, scratchy letters carved into the walls with that horrid message that has been haunting her nightmares for five years.

**_She is waiting for you at the construction site at Rojo Avenue._ **

That particular memory had the inevitable effect of making Shego remember her last fight with that... _monster_. “Bogeyman...” Shego muttered under her breath.

.....

The rain poured down relentlessly at the construction site for a new office building at Rojo Avenue. The half-assembled building had done little to keep the rain out. Though thankfully there were some stairs already built to get up the first few stories of the building. But downpour however wasn't the main hazard here. It was the fact that the shadows cast at the site had all seem come alive!

Shego's instincts were keeping her alive so far. Outside of her peripheral vision she could hear a faint hissing, like leaking gas, and then shards of jagged, black glass would burst forth from the very walls and floor with such speed that even Shego would have trouble avoiding them. But just avoiding the shards wasn't enough. 

Whenever the lightning flashed, tendrils of oily shadows would lash out in the split-second illumination to try and ensnare her. Her plasma thankfully seemed to hurt them, as they appeared to squeal in pain when ever Shego struck them with her ignited claws. But the light given off by the plasma just seemed to make the attacks come more frequently. So she would extinguish her hands only for the glass shard attacks to become more periodical.

This... this isn't what it was like before. Back at the children's hospital it seemed like this guy's shtick was parlour tricks and misdirections, manipulating shadows and a show at performing telekinesis. A brief, unnerving thought entered Shego's mind, “What if _was_ real? Had this guy been holding back before? Is that why we couldn't find him at the end?”

She decided it didn't matter. Regardless of what he was capable of, the freak that called himself the Bogeyman had broken into Go Tower and abducted her kid. Shego was not going to let that stand. He made this personal, and now she was going to make him wish he was only going to get a beating.

At about halfway up the structure, his voice echoed through the empty halls. It was soft and had a metallic reverberation to it, with an unmistakeably venomous tone.

**_“You do not disappoint me, Natasha. I shall give you that. I knew there was something different about you when you interrupted my performance at the children's hospital. Something special. You are nothing like your slow-witted brothers. People like you come by only once in a lifetime. I just had to see you again. It has been far too long since someone with your kind of strength has risen to oppose with me. I shall relish this confrontation.”_ **

“Shut it, creep! And how do you know my real name?!”

**_“I know many things about many people, Natasha. It helps when I need to put on one of these special performances for the truly exceptional in this world. I just need to find what it is they value most in this world. And they come to me like moths to the flame. But you and your little one are not afraid of fire, are you?”_ **

“Leave Agni out of this! She's done nothing to you!”

**_“True enough. But that is irrelevant. YOU are the one I am interested in. The unmistakeable heart of a mother, true and endlessly devoted, beats within you. And I want to see what that heart of yours compels you to do for your child. What follows next will be the memories that shall last both mother and daughter for the rest of your lives, that will shape the people you will both become. No matter what happens on this night, the two of you will be GLORIOUS.”_ **

“ _YOU BE QUIET!!!_ ” Shego hollered as she threw plasma bolts into the darkness. At this point, it was starting to feel like his voice was coming from inside her own head.

**_“I will never tire of this. Of witnessing this primal terror. Parents seeking to save their child from a horrific fate. You are not the first. You will not be the last. But you WILL be one of my most prized memories.”_ **

Adrenaline surged through Shego's veins as she climbed the site despite the relentless attacks from the darkness. The higher she went the more the building fell apart, until all that was left of it was a skeleton; steel girders that were to be the supports for the building's infrastructure and a few pieces of wood. With no more stairs to climb, Shego was forced to leap and swing between the girders in order to reach the peak.

Fortunately, the full moon in the night sky was providing more than the fluorescent lights of the building ever could have. With no walls and floors around, the attacks from the glass shards had stopped, having nothing to burst out of. Still, the shadow tendrils persisted in their assault between lightning strikes. Shego pushed forward until she was at the very top of the would-be building.

Standing at the end of an exposed girder was that horrid excuse of a man. He was draped in a mouldering, tattered black shroud and hood, his hands and feet were covered in a black, skin tight material. His face was obscured by a featureless white mask that seemed to be made out of a solid porous material with small hairline fractures in a few places. It gave Shego the impression of a cracked eggshell. 

And suspended by his left hand was Agni. Who was cocooned in massive straps of black leather that only allowed her hair and right eye to be visible. Muffled cries seeped through the leather and despite the rain, it was clear she was crying her little eyes out and thrashing desperately to be free. Seeing her baby like this, Shego readied herself to attack and ignited her hands.

“ _You. Little. FREAK!!! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO MY KID?!_ ” Shego roared over the thunder.

**_“Nothing I that have not done to other children. But if this is what shocks you, you have not seen ANYTHING yet.”_ **

As he said those words, his mask cracked around the mouth area, shards of white suspended in the shadows, like a horrific smile as the fracture worked it's way from one side to the other. His mask reminded her of a horrific, grinning skull with no nostrils or eye sockets. The Bogeyman tilted his head towards Agni and let go of the strap suspending her leather cocoon.

Shego's eyes went wide and she lunged forward to grab her child. As she dove past the Bogeyman and over the edge of the girder to grab Agni, her descent was quickly halted by shadows shooting out from under his shroud, leaving her dangling over the construction site.

“ _AGNI!!!_ ” Shego cried out as she watched her little girl plunge towards to the ground. As she fell, Agni bounced off of other exposed girders, only stopping when she eventually hit the ground with a dull _thump_.

The Bogeyman's metallic laugh washed out the thunder. As Shego looked down in horror at her little girl's body at the base of the building, she actually began crying. Despair quickly turned into white hot fury however, and in her rage, Shego ignited her plasma and used the force of the blasts to propel herself back up to face her child's killer.

There were no more words. Just horrific laughter and a screaming mother battling out in the rain at a construction site. They leaped from girder to girder, shadows slashing and plasma bursting, each time getting closer and closer to the ground. The Bogeyman floated around the exposed metalwork, his cloak twisting and coiling like a shadowy serpent. Shego lunging after him, her claws and plasma blasts melting the steel around them, the upper levels collapsing in her wake. 

Eventually, they were forced back into the unfinished hallways lower down to escape the falling metal. The brutality of the fight intensified. The Bogeyman would grab her by the ankles with his shadows and send Shego smashing through the walls. In retaliation, Shego set everything ablaze in an effort to burn the monster in front of her to death. As black glass shards flew towards her from the darkness, she shot them down with more quick bursts of plasma.

The more they fought, the more the building suffered. The heat along with the collapsing metal and crumbling drywall caused the floor beneath the fighters to buckle. The enemies ignored the groaning of the overtaxed floorboards until it finally gave way, sending them both crashing down. As they fell, Shego managed to get above the Bogeyman and began a relentless assault on him with her plasma. It wasn't enough to fall through one floor. Shego's ruthless attacks broke another floor. And another. Until she was back where she had started.

He was still _laughing_ despite Shego's relentless thrashing. Rabid curiosity filled her mind. She needed to _know_ what kind of face this lunatic had, what the person who would do something like steal someone's child just to throw them off a building would look like. So she dug her clawed gloves into his white mask and pulled hard. The porous material wouldn't budge, but Shego would not relent. She yanked and tore at his head until it finally snapped off. His head, that is, not the mask. No, not the mask. That was still firmly attached to his face. And he was still _LAUGHING_. 

The shock of seeing the severed head, of everything that happened there and the exhaustion from the fight was just too much. When she finally awoke, the Wegos were caring for her at the Go University Hospital. Ilya was sitting next to Shego, and Andrei was at the door watching the hallway. 

Shego began to cry out for her lost child, but her younger brothers heard only a murmur and just told her to rest. They said that Agni was fine. That somehow she now had the same greenish skin as her mother. They said that the doctors couldn't explain it. Shego only cared about one thing they had said, though. Her baby was alive! Relieved, Shego drifted back to sleep.

.....

That night had haunted Shego's mind for years now. Everything she'd done up to this point was to keep something like it from happening again. She was sure that whoever was behind the black envelope was just some sick copycat out to live an escapist fantasy, not that this fact would grant that person any mercy. After all, she was so sure that she tore of the Bogeyman's head in the last fight. No human could survive that.

**Author's Notes**

**This chapter took a bit longer than usual to write, but good things come to those who wait. Many thanks to Blackbird and Festum for giving me permission to use their characters. Also a shout out to my editor “Diana” for all her work on this project.**

**Some of you might have guessed that this is a retelling of Agni's, and by extension Shego's origin story. What I'm working on is something I have crafted after spending a few years talking to both Blackbird and Festum. Taking notes on their characters and concepts that didn't get into any of their own finished stories. I hope you all will enjoy what I'm working on.**


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

_The usual boilerplate disclaimer. I do not own Kim Possible. Kim Possible is the intellectual property of the Walt Disney Corporation and the creation of Bob Schooley and Mark McCorkle._

_Agni Drago, Cassandra King, Mrs. Turler and the Bogeyman are the creations of Trackula/Festum._

It's eerie what a lack of sound can do to a pristine hallway. The west wing of Go Academy had been closed for the year due to low enrolment. Normally, this area would be filled with other grade schoolers straight out of the best kindergartens money could buy, but with no students in the hallways or in the classrooms, a day lit school hallway just seemed off somehow. But that suited Agni just fine right now, though. She needed to be alone. A little time to herself would be perfect before the tempest that was her Grandma Roza would come crashing down on her head.

Grandma Roza was an intimidating woman. She'd never raised a hand against Agni, but her icy gaze along with her piercing words were enough to totally destroy anyone's sense of self-worth. Agni was not looking forward to going home today. She was even half-entertaining the notion of running away and trying to find her mom. But even at eight years old, she knew that was a terrible idea. 

So for now, Agni sat here, halfway up an abandoned stairwell. The sunlight shone through the windows and a mild California winter wind blew outside, rustling the leaves on the trees. A pair of swallows were perched on the window ledge looking inwards to where Agni was sitting. 

It seemed that all she could do know is wait for the inevitable. To pass the time Agni started snapping her fingers, creating little sparks of plasma. Even as a private fantasy it seemed so mean, but still... It would be so... easy to burn them all. But again, she knew that to be a terrible idea. If she did, then everyone would label her 'little miss pyromaniac', and she would never know anything resembling peace ever again.

Lost in the small flickers of her plasma, Agni didn't notice that she wasn't alone until a shadow fell over her from behind. She immediately stopped snapping her fingers and turned around to see Ms. Allen standing over her. Ms. Allen was the History teacher here, and truth be told, the only teacher that seemed to care about her students as actual people and not just a reflection of the school's prestige.

Some students might have found her intimidating before they actually got to know her. Ms. Allen was just shy of six feet tall, and possessed fair skin with auburn hair which she tied neatly into ponytail behind her head while allowing her bangs to frame her face. She wore a burgundy blazer over a white blouse with a black skirt and pantyhose in black high heels. Her eyes were brown and at the moment were wide with absolute shock. 

“So. I guess this is why we only ever see or talk with your grandparents.” Ms. Allen said. Agni's heart sank. Now a teacher knew who she was. Was there any end to how badly she could mess things up today?

Ms. Allen came to Agni's side and sat down beside her on the stairwell, “You know, Agni, everybody in school is looking for you. They know what happened in the cafeteria. Or at least, they have an idea about what happened.”

Agni groaned and buried her face in her arms that were supported by her knees. She could practically hear the scorn of the faculty and the jeers of the students. This day was quickly becoming a contender for the second worst day of her life.

“However, I think I need to hear _your_ side of the story, Agni. I mean, it's clear to me now that there is a lot more to your life than just being a student at this... place.” Ms. Allen said in a soothing tone. Agni was relieved. Ms. Allen had always been the one teacher Agni felt safe around.

Raising her head and putting on a brave face, Agni composed herself, “Well, I headed into the cafeteria, and King was there waiting to ambush me.”

“Cassandra again?” Ms. Allen said dejectedly. One of the reasons why Agni liked Ms. Allen was because she was the only teacher to actually call out bad behaviour in her students and that included Cassandra. But her efforts were all for nothing, as the staff in the principal's office would just let Cassandra off with a warning no matter how many times Ms. Allen sent the little witch to them.

“Yep. She tried to trip me as I entered the cafeteria, and when I dodged her, she started harassing me while I got in line for lunch. Most of what she said didn't bother me, but then she started to imply my mom was some kind 'entertainer for men'.” Agni spat out with contempt.

A concerned look crept across Ms. Allen's face. She had a good idea as to how Cassandra knew about such things. From the few times she had met Cassandra's father at parent-teacher conferences he had proven himself to be an “opinionated” man. More likely than not, Cassandra picked up such a term from listening to her father and him not caring what his eight year old child would hear. It was unlikely Cassandra would actually know what “entertaining men” really meant. She probably just thought that it meant something scandalous. But Agni...

“Agni, how do you know what Cassandra meant when she said 'entertainer for men'?” Ms. Allen gently enquired.

Looking away from Ms. Allen, Agni responded, “Do I have to say it? My uncles are what's left of Team Go. I've grown up hearing police jargon most of my life. That, and I've learned things by paying attention to the news and looking up words in encyclopedias.”

Ms. Allen looked downward, sadly. “Which means your mother is in actuality Shego, I presume? I suspected there was something more to you for some time, but it's never right to assume things without proof.”

Seeing as how the cat was out of the bag, Agni snapped her fingers again, causing another spark of plasma. “Yep.”

“So your mother is the member of Team Go that left five years ago, right? I know you've been raised by your grandparents ever since you were enrolled here. May I ask where your father is, then?” Ms. Allen enquired.

“I don't know. I don't think my mom even told him she was pregnant with me. I've never met him. Closest thing I had to a dad were my... _uncles_.” Agni said that last word through gritted teeth.

Sensing some resentment from Agni over her family, Ms. Allen decided to proceed with her responses delicately, “I couldn't even begin to imagine what life was like for you there.”

With a bitter look on her face, Agni glared at Ms. Allen, “Well, it was all fun and games until I found out where exactly I stood on their list of priorities. More specifically, on _Uncle Hego's_ list of priorities.”

Ms. Allen had seen that anger in Agni's eyes before, but never directed at her. It was surprisingly intense. But she had the feeling that Agni was keeping something buried deep inside her and that she needed to vent.

“What did your Uncle Hego do, Agni?” Ms. Allen asked.

Agni's eyes started to water and she started to grow tense as her hands gripped her knees, “When I was three... when I was three... I was kidnapped. Straight from his so-called 'Fortress of Ultimate Goodness'! He said I was safe there, but nobody is safe there! He didn't even TRY to keep me safe while I was there! He just gave me a room and called it a day!”

Surprise crawled slowly into Ms. Allen's expression. Gently, she tried to coax more information out of Agni, “Sweetie, you can tell me what happened.”

Tears began to stream down Agni's cheeks as she continued, “A monster came for me. He tied me up. He... _hurt_ me! Threw me off a building just to spite my mom!”

Ms. Allen's jaw dropped and she almost reached out to put her hand around Agni, but quickly stopped herself, “How did you survive something like that?”

Sniffling, Agni released her knees and ignited her hands. “This is how! My powers activated and saved me, but I don't know if they should have! My life was ruined because of him!”

Gingerly, Ms. Allen asked, “How was your life ruined, Agni?”

“Because of Uncle Hego!” Agni started to cry, “He said I was safe and I wasn't! When Mom came for me and killed the monster who hurt me, Uncle Hego wanted to give her to the police for murder! So she had to run away!”

Covering her mouth in shock from Agni's outburst, Ms. Allen asked, “How do you know this?”

“Because Uncle Hego told me!” Agni cried, “Two years after Mom left, I was still asking when she was going to come home! And he eventually cracked and started begging me for forgiveness while telling me what he did! I can't forgive him for that! He took my Mom away!”

Seeing Agni, one of the most taciturn and confident children she'd ever known break down like this, Ms. Allen decided to go ahead and put her arm around the crying child in order to give her a hug. It looked like she needed it. Agni, in turn, buried her head in Ms. Allen's shoulder.

“That's why I live with my grandparents! My mom is gone, and I'm not safe with my uncles! And Grandma Roza sent me here so that I could have a 'normal' life and never be the target of a supervillain again, but I hate it here! The other girls either avoid me or try make my life horrible, so I have no friends! The teachers are all on my case for things I can't control! And I go home and my Grandpa Dmitri is too afraid of Grandma Roza to do anything, and she doesn't show _anybody_ affection! An ice statue would be more warm than her!”

Patting Agni on the shoulder, Ms. Allen could feel the little girl cry herself dry. “That's why I hit King with the lunch tray! She made fun of my _MOM!_ My mom, who killed the Bogeyman. For me!”

“The Bogeyman?” Ms. Allen asked. She remembered hearing about him from five years ago. A new supervillain who had attacked daycares, playgrounds, and a children's hospital before disappearing without a trace. Considering his last attack caused around 15 children to go into critical conditions due to medical equipment failure, what actually happened to him was justice as far as she was concerned.

“Yeah,” Agni sniffled, “My mom killed the Bogeyman. That's why I won't allow anyone to badmouth her. No matter what anybody ever says about her, I know she's my hero.”

“You know, Agni,” Ms. Allen said as she patted the child's head, “I think you're someone really special. Given the kind of life you've had, and what you're capable of, the fact that you haven't attacked any other students before for how they treat you shows remarkable strength on your part.”

Her crying had stopped for the moment and Agni looked up at her teacher, “It's easy to let trauma define you for the rest of your life, letting it be an excuse to lash out at others. 'I'm hurt, so it's okay to hurt others'. But you don't. I think you are going to go far in this world. And truth be told, I feel like this school isn't the right environment for you. That's not to say you are in any way inferior or lacking in any manner. But this place is... toxic. And for somebody with needs like yours, it's not healthy for you to stay here.”

Agni was confused over what she was hearing. It was support, but also a suggestion to leave the school? She'd heard people's desires for her to leave this school before, but this was the first time that someone had suggested it for Agni's well-being, instead of the reputation of the school.

“How about we go to the principal's office, hmm? We can talk about setting up a transfer so we can find you a school that's makes you feel safe and accepted. I think it would be best for you to get away from this... ivy league limbo.” Ms. Allen softly said.

Agni snickered at that, “I would have gone with ivory purgatory, myself.”

Smiling, Ms. Allen said “I'd start looking into a transfer myself, but I can't leave the girls of this school behind. You're not the only student here who is suffering from this atmosphere of elitism. I couldn't leave them behind, knowing that they'll be bullied like you have.”

The sunlight from the windows shone behind Ms Allen, and the way the light cascaded down around her made her look almost like an angel. But unlike Cassandra, Ms. Allen gave off a sense of warmth and safety that made her feel like the real thing. The chirping from the swallows on the windowsill only seemed to reinforce that notion in Agni's mind.

“You know, Ms. Allen? You're the first person I've actually been able to talk to about all this. My family just dismisses it, and I can't trust anyone else at this school about anything from home. It feels... nice to get it off my chest.” Agni confided in her teacher.

“Agni, your secret is safe with me. And if you ever need to talk, about anything. I'll be waiting to listen. In fact...” Ms. Allen reached into her left blazer pocket and took out her wallet. She flipped open the leather folds and tugged out a small business card with her number on it. “You can contact me at this number. It doesn't matter what time of day it is. If you need me, I'll make time for you.”

Agni held the business card in front of her and a smile gradually spread across her face. She held the card close to her chest for a moment before placing it in one of her own blazer pockets. Quietly, she said, “Thank you, Ms. Allen.” 

Standing up, Ms. Allen extended her hand to Agni, “Come on, kiddo. Let's go face the wolves together. I've got your back.”

With that same smile on her face, Agni wiped away her tears and grasped onto Ms. Allen's hand. Her teacher helped her stand up, released her grip, and then the two of them walked side-by-side down the stairs. As they headed back towards the populated area of the school, it wasn't long before they came across the other students in the hallways who were wandering around on their lunch break.

The other girls gave them strange looks, whispering and gossiping about Agni as she walked alongside Ms. Allen. It was everything Agni expected it to be. Comments of “It's about time” to “I knew she wouldn't be here forever” reached her ears, but it didn't matter now. If it meant that she could finally leave this place behind her, she'd accept whatever verbal lashing might be in her immediate future.

Still, when they turned a corner and were about a hallway's distance from the principal's office, they were greeted by some very unfriendly faces. Standing out from everyone and everything was Mrs. Turler, the English Composition teacher. She was tall, thin, and looked like a schoolmarm out of the Victorian era. Her dress was long and black, with thick lace trim covering every exposed edge, puffed sleeves, and a high, closed collar. The overall effect was rather intimidating.

Her black, greying hair was tied back in a bun, and her piercing grey eyes rested above a strong nose with a notable hook to it. Her cheekbones were high and despite the wrinkles here and there, her skin was noticeably firm. All in all, she had the look of a vulture ready to tear some poor soul to pieces. Standing by her side were Cassandra, Grace and Shelly. All of whom were smirking with sadistic glee.

“So... you've finally shown everyone here what I've always known about you, Drago.” Turler said with an arrogant sense of superiority. “That you are no more than a common delinquent intent on besmirching the fine name of our fine academy.”

Turler turned her gaze toward Ms. Allen, and a small crack of a smile formed on her lips. “Good on you for finding this little miscreant, Holly. Maybe there's hope for you here yet.”

Frowning, Ms. Allen stepped forward to stare Turler directly in the eyes. “Oh, don't even start, Turler. Unlike you, I actually take the time to know my students. And you know what? I think Agni's got the patience of a saint for what she's had to endure both at this school and at home.”

The scowl that was Turler's default expression immediately snapped back into place. “Don't tell me you've actually bought into some sob story this little ruffian has woven for you. She can't be trusted.”

“And why do you say that?” Ms. Allen demanded.

“I have reason to believe that her family is involved in illicit activities.” Mrs. Turler sharply responded. 

“What on earth do you mean by THAT?” Ms. Allen asked incredulously.

“Her grandparents simply do not have the financial background to afford our enrolment fees. Yet, they manage. And whenever I have looked into the matter, I get redirected and ultimately don't get a satisfactory answer. Not to mention they lack any distinguished lineage deserving of our time. These factors, combined with that... 'child's' behaviour make her and her family highly suspect.” Turler coldly stated.

“Is that all that matters here, Turler? Money and heritage? I'll have you know Agni's told me who her family is.” Ms. Allen snapped back.

Agni tugged on Ms. Allen's sleeve and with a desperate look whispered “Don't-!”

Raising a hand as if to reassure Agni, Ms. Allen continued, “It just so happens, Turler, that Agni's family has done more for this city than any of the idle rich who send their girls here as a matter of tradition and boosting their egos.”

“Oh?” Turler said as she arched an eyebrow, “Then you won't mind telling me which family that is?” 

Agni's tugs were getting more frantic, but to her relief Ms. Allen simply said, “I can't do that.” Hearing that, Agni relaxed. And stuck her tongue out at Cassandra. Cassandra pulled down her lower eyelid in response.

“Give me one good reason why not.” Turler said through clenched teeth. She did not like it when someone dared to think that they knew better than her.

“Because it's a private matter that requires discretion. And I won't betray that kind of trust just to sate some gossipy old hen's wounded ego.” Ms. Allen said succinctly, a sly smile on her face.

“That isn't good enough. Everyone here has a place where they belong in society and reputations to uphold. This little deviant does not uphold that standard.” Turler glared at Agni. Agni, for her part, glared right back.

“Well, I can agree on that, at least. Agni doesn't belong here. She's too good for this place.” Ms. Allen snapped at Turler.

“What?” Turler said incredulously.

“You heard me. For everything Agni has gone through here and at home, she deserves an environment that makes her and others like her feel safe and accepted. Not this toxic atmosphere of pride and entitlement you and other teachers seem to do your best to cultivate in our students.” Ms. Allen said defiantly.

As the argument between the two teachers escalated, all eyes were on the two women and no one was looking out the windows on the left of the hallway to notice the sky darkening. Thunder rolled, and the wind howled violently. It wasn't until the lights started to flicker that Ms. Allen and Mrs. Turler stopped arguing.

Agni looked outside and saw a cloud of darkness looming over the school. Snow was starting to fall down at an alarming rate. Snow? Already? Her heart began to race as flashbacks to the night at the construction site shot through her mind. As if triggered by those very thoughts, tendrils of shadow began to descend upon the school grounds like small, thin twisters.

Whimpering, Agni slumped to ground and scrambled to the wall opposite to the windows, pressing her back to it tightly. Noticing Agni's withdrawal, Ms. Allen came over to her and asked, “Agni? What's wrong?”

A deafening CRACK echoed through the hallways as fissures opened up in the floors. Vermin of all kinds, spiders, cockroaches, earthworms and centipedes began pouring out from the fractured linoleum. Followed soon by a viscous black fluid, almost like oil. It pooled on the ground, coating everything as it rose up and floated into the air. It wasn't long until the screams of all the students rang through the corridors.

The light bulbs blew out row by row, sending glass and filaments flying all over as the hallways all went dark. A menacing chuckle that was both metallic and soft bled through the shadows, intent on being heard by all inside the school. and then, it started to _sing_.

****_“It is snowing, it is freezing.  
The children are all screaming.  
They run and run, to find their mums,  
But they will only find tears a-streaming.”_

Agni was paralysed with fear. It was happening again. It was happening again! _“NONONONONONONONONON- **NO!!!** ”_ Agni screamed, grasping her head in panic.

Ms. Allen tried to calm Agni down, despite the chaos erupting all around them but yelped and grabbed Agni's arm hard, desperately pulling her away from the wall. Agni was confused at first, until she turned around and saw that the wall was gone. In it's place was a horrid eye. It had a purple sclera, and a yellow iris with multiple pupils. The central pupil was in the shape of an inverted Y, with three small circular pupils occupying the other thirds of the iris.

Ms. Allen frantically tried to take Agni in her arms so they could get away, but Agni was too limp with fear for Miss Allen to effectively carry. The inverted Y of the eye opened up, revealing a mouth ringed with sharp conical teeth. A long black tongue slithered out of the toothy maw, and on it's tip rested a blank, cracked white mask. The flesh swelled towards the end of the tongue until it had formed itself what vaguely resembled a skinless, inky black human torso with a long, thin neck.

Pulsating, the torso burst open as a pair of thin arms with large, bleached skeletal hands emerged from the visceral mass. Limp shreds of flesh hung from its abdomen and chest cavity like spilled innards, wet with some manner of foul grey liquid. Bony white spurs sprouted from the torso's elbows and shoulders, while along its spine the ebony flesh split open to allow its vertebrae to extend past its exposed muscle tissue. The alabaster mask splintered, forming itself into that horrific smile that had haunted Agni's every nightmare for the past five years. And then, the mask spoke,

**_“I have missed you, Agni. You look surprised to see me. Did you think I was gone forever?”_ **

The dark voice washed over all those standing before the horrible eye. Mrs. Turler, along with Cassandra and her lackeys had fled upon seeing the manifestation of the eye and it's “tongue”, screaming as they went. Everyone was screaming. Ms. Allen hurriedly attempted to run away with Agni in tow, but the oily fluid that was seeping from the fissures in the floor wouldn't let her get any footing.

Deep in shock, all Agni could do was mutter, “It's him... he's back... mommy...”

One of the black, skinless torso's bony hands shot forward faster than the eye could see, pinning Ms. Allen to the floor by her legs. It then grabbed Agni around the waist with its other hand, violently ripping her from of Ms. Allen's arms. Agni looked like a limp ragdoll in its grasp in comparison to the creature before them. Tilting it's head towards Agni's direction and with a tone that was as grandfatherly as the creature could mimic, it said to her,

**_“Hush, child. Your mother shall be joining us soon enough.”_ **

With the mask still grinning, the “tongue” let go of Ms. Allen and retreated back inside the toothy mouth of the eye, Agni still in it's grasp.

“ _AGNI!_ ” Ms. Allen cried out. But it was too late. Agni had been swallowed whole. The eye closed its mouth and turned it's gaze to Ms. Allen. Then the voice said,

**_“You should be running.”_ **

Terrified out of her wits, Ms. Allen struggled to stand, slipping on the oil on the floor. She could feel the vermin crawling all over her, slipping under her clothes. As adrenaline surged through her veins, she managed to push herself off of the oily fluid, find her footing and ran off into the darkness. The dark voice laughed as the eye shut, fading into the abyss as both the building and school grounds were swallowed by shadows.

**Author's Notes**

**So here's chapter three! It took me awhile to find the time to write this, but once I did, I got most of it written within a single afternoon. So I'm getting better at this.**

**Thanks again to my editor “Diana” for taking the time and effort to work with me as I make progress with this project.**


	4. Chapter 4

** Chapter 4 **

_The usual boilerplate disclaimer. I do not own Kim Possible. Kim Possible is the intellectual property of the Walt Disney Corporation and the creation of Bob Schooley and Mark McCorkle._

_Jen Credible and Dave Seer are the creations of Blackbird. The Bogeyman is the creation of Trackula/Festum._

They say that if you can make it in Go City, you can make it anywhere. Indeed, the vibrant neon of the city's glamourous downtown made the metropolis seemed to feel, and look, like an ideal mix of New Vegas and New York City. But today, the city wasn't so bright. The city seemed to feel and look like an old, faded photograph. It was almost seemed like the colour was being drained from the world.

The cause for this morose appearance was a literal cloud of darkness that hung over the city's more uptown area. A massive, ragged shroud blotted out the sky as a constant gale swept through the neighbourhood. Descending from the ominous veil were a trio of small, thin twisters that, for whatever reason, defied the rules of nature and remained in place. They did not reach the ground, for they seemed to be fuelling a dome of shadows that had swallowed the Go Academy for Gifted Women whole.

Naturally, the media was on the scene, despite the inclement weather. They were kept at a safe distance from the gloomy vault by police lines, while emergency workers were trying desperately to penetrate the massive span of blackness. The tension in the area was rising, as desperate parents were trying to force their way past the barricade, demanding answers for what had happened to their daughters. 

Not even the sight of Team Go was allaying concerns. Despite their efforts, they had no luck crossing the threshold of the abyssal wall so far. It didn't help matters that now they seemed more preoccupied with arguing amongst themselves, and with a duo consisting of a young man in a brown leather jacket along with his raven haired female companion in a blue sweater with beige khaki pants.

“...And I'm telling you, you have to give us a chance!” Jen protested to Hego.

“Miss, this is the third time you've slipped past the barricade and the third time I've told you: This isn't a situation that civilians should be involving themselves with,” Hego stated.

“And since you're making _so_ much progress as it is, it's obvious you don't need our help?” Dave snarked.

“Listen, son...” Hego began to assert.

“No, YOU listen, you big blue cheesebrain!” Dave shouted back.

Heated words flew between the two groups as the wind howled around them. Both teams were eager to aid in the rescue of the students that were trapped in the school. But fear and desperation, compounded by the horrid weather, was causing everyone to become hostile. However, the assembled group was about to see some true hostility...

It was distant at first, but eventually the roar of an engine could be heard over the wind. The pair of swallows which were perched on a steel crowd control barricade just three metres from the scene between Team Go and Team Credible were startled enough to fly away. As everyone attempted to ascertain where the mechanical noise was coming from, it was one of the Wego twins who realized that the racket was coming from above them.

“Hey, guys?” Ilya said as he pointed skyward, “We've got company.”

As the group looked towards where Ilya's finger was directed, a burgundy hoverbike grew ever closer as it barrelled towards them at a furious speed. Of course, it was the green and black clad rider of the bike that caused the most concern. For her fury over what was happening was going to be something else.

“Uh-oh.” said Andrei as he, Ilya, and Mego all side stepped away from Hego. Hego, for his part, was initially shocked to see his sister arrive on the scene. He was hoping that she would never have to worry about the situation. But he quickly composed himself and prepared to greet his grumpy, excessively violent sibling.

Once Shego saw Hego standing alone next to the dome, she gunned the motor and began to bare down on him. Realizing what his sister was about to do, Hego made a small gulp of shock, braced himself and activated his glow. Just before her bike made impact with Hego, Shego did a back flip to land on the ground in front of her brother as the hoverbike crashed into Hego and exploded.

Jen and Dave, however, were just plain impressed at the spectacle that was Shego's arrival. Dave gave out a whistle and muttered “That lady knows how to arrive on the scene”. 

Jen, however, was just staring at Shego with her mouth open with a dumbfounded look on her face. It didn't take Dave long before noticed Jen's fixation on Shego, so he started to wave his hand before her face and started snapping his fingers. Shrugging, Dave said, “Huh. I wouldn't have guessed...” as he gently pushed Jen's mouth closed.

Hego, for his part, was unharmed by Shego's stunt. Deactivating his glow, he patted his shoulders to put out the small flames on his uniform and walked forward with his hand extended to greet his sister. “Hello sister...” Hego started.

Shego slapped his hand aside and looked him dead in the eyes. “What. Happened?” Shego snarled through gritted teeth.

Bringing his hand over his mouth and clearing his throat, Hego said, “Well, we haven't quite figured out what's happening here, or who's responsible for this evil cloud of darkness. But rest assured, dear sister, that we will...”

“Be of NO help what-so-ever! You can't even keep a man with a literal birdbrain out of your computer systems! HOW are you going to deal with THIS?!” Shego shouted.

“Well, everything has a weak point, doesn't it?” Hego said with confidence as he walked over to the dome. Isolating his glow to his right fist, he punched the dark wall. The sound of something heavy hitting solid rubber could be heard as his fist came into contact with... something. A closer look revealed that Hego's fist was stopped by some invisible force just in front of the darkness itself.

“That does not work. THAT WILL NOT WORK!” Mego yelled as threw his arms into the air after pinching the bridge on his nose.

“Patience, team! All we have to do is test the perimeter and we'll have a point of entry eventually!” Hego exclaimed enthusiastically as he puffed his chest and walked five feet to the right before punching the darkness again. To no effect.

“IS THIS ALL YOU'VE DONE SO FAR?!” Shego hollered as she ignited her hands.

“Of course, not!” Hego retorted, “I've sent the twins to check the sewers to find a way to in from underground.”

As if on cue, red streaks of energy bolted through the crowds and shot into the Wego twins. And immediately, sheepish looks and grins grew on their faces, “Yeah... about that, big guy...” Andrei said with hesitation.

“As it turns out, this 'dome' is actually more like a bubble. It extends deep into the underground and has no visible entrance.” Ilya shrugged as he nervously chuckled.

Shego glared at Hego so intensely her brothers almost forgot that she couldn't shoot plasma from her eyes. “You had. ONE. JOB. MAKE SURE THIS SCHOOL WAS SAFE! I KNEW I COULDN'T TRUST YOU EVEN WITH THIS!” Shego screamed.

“See, THIS is why you need to listen to us!” Dave shouted. Everybody present turned to face the two youths from Los Diablos. Seeing that Jen was still fixated on Shego, Dave elbowed her in the ribs.

“Oof.” Jen grunted. Eventually realizing that she was just staring vacantly, Jen blushed and composed herself so she could address the superhero team, “Ahem, It's just that we deal with this kind of stuff all the time. Demon summonings, ghost hauntings, and general... weird stuff. It's why we're here.”

Cocking her left eyebrow, Shego turned to Jen and glared at her, “And WHO are you two supposed to be?”

Jen giggled timidly in response to Shego's assertive nature. Shaking his head, Dave stepped forward, extended his right hand and said, “I'm Dave Seer, Seer by name, Seer by trade. This is my teammate Jen Credible. We normally operate out of Los Diablos, but we received an... 'invitation' to come here a couple of days ago.”

“An invitation?...” Shego pondered. She flipped open a compartment in her belt and pulled out the black envelope that was delivered to her hotel room. Seeing Shego examine the small ebony package prompted Andrei's curiosity, and he sneaked up on her to yank the sleeve from her hand.

“ANDREI! GIVE THAT BACK!” Shego snapped.

“Aw, come on, sis! The first time we see you in five years and you're... keeping...” Andrei started to bargain with Shego, but as soon as he saw the scratchy white letters on the back of the envelope, his ruddy skin turned a pale pink.

“Andrei? What's the matter?...” Ilya asked his twin before Andrei showed him the writing on the package. Shaken, Ilya looked at Shego and with wide, horrified eyes he said, “Natasha...?”

Shego crossed her arms and looked at the ground. Andrei flipped open the envelope and when the twins saw the picture of Agni inside, Andrei covered his mouth and dropped the photo, while Ilya staggered backwards a couple of steps.

“Jeez, what's so... bad...” Mego said as leaned over to pick up the photo. When he saw the contents of the image, he stopped talking. A sombre look formed on his face, and he turned to face Shego.

“So... HE'S behind this... Well... dang...” Mego said dejectedly.

Hego walked up behind Mego and looked at the picture. With shock in his voice, he said, “Sister... Do you know what this means?”

“Yeah... We're dealing with...” Shego started to say.

“You're not a murderer!” Hego said with pride, his eyes closed and a wide smile plastered on his face as he moved in to give his sister a big hug.

Silence fell between the superhero team, as the twins and Mego slipped away from Hego's immediate vicinity. When Hego opened his eyes, he could have sworn that Shego's eyes were glowing solid green. And before he could register his mistake, Shego shot him with a plasma ball straight to his solar plexus that sent him tumbling back towards the dark wall, which bounced him forwards to Shego as she kicked him in the groin.

Hego crumpled to the ground in pain, and Shego began to furiously kick him in the ribs. “AFTER ALL THIS TIME, WITH AN ENTIRE SCHOOL THAT'S UNDER ATTACK _**BY SOMEONE PRETENDING TO BE HIM, THAT'S WHAT YOU'RE MORE CONCERNED ABOUT?!**_” 

“Seriously, dude. You didn't get the hint when the police laughed the blue off your costume for trying to turn Shego in for murder five years ago? News flash, ya big blue dolt! THEY DON'T TAKE KINDLY TO FREAKS THAT HURT KIDS!” Mego yelled at Hego as Shego beat him senseless.

“I'm guessing context is needed here.” Jen said to the twins as they watched Shego assault her brother.

With a dead-eyed gaze, the twins just stared off into space as they muttered, “Not a supervillain... a monster...”

“Oookay then...” Jen realized she wasn't going to get any answers from the twins. While the crimson adolescents were completely unfocused, Jen stepped forward and took the envelope and picture from their hands. After reading the writing on both items, Jen passed the articles to Dave.

As Dave examined the piece of paper and film, Jen asked, “Why do I get the feeling I'm the only one here who doesn't have the full picture about what this... 'guy' can do?”

“Just wait until we pass the point of no return, Jen.” Dave said as he looked up from the disturbing image in his hand.

“Alright then...” Jen sighed. She looked at the spectacle of sibling abuse and composed herself. “Excuse me!” she shouted. Shego stopped kicking Hego for a moment to turn around and face Jen. She kicked Hego one more time before walking over to the two teenagers and staring them down.

“Okay...” Shego growled as she looked at Dave. “ _You_ said you got an invitation to come here. What do you mean by that?”

“Look, I'm what people in the olden days would call an “oracle”. I receive visions about things before they happen. Gives me massive headaches and the odd nosebleed. Normally, it's vague stuff that shows me a face and a location, but this time a voice spoke to me. Said that the vision was my 'invitation' and that me and my friend here shouldn't waste any time getting here.” Dave stated.

“Visions? Seriously?” Shego said with a dose of scepticism.

“There is a dome of darkness that has consumed a school, and you're going to argue that my friend has psychic powers?” Jen asked.

“Not exactly our number one concern right now, folks.” Dave said to the group. “This charming ball of doom and gloom is actually a miasma. Just like what happened in Ancient Greece when Atreus was fed a dinner containing the bodies of his sons thanks to his jerk of a brother Thyestes. According to my vision, if we don't cross the threshold soon and figure out how to stop it, it will expand to cover the entirety of Go City. At the VERY least.”

Scoffing, Shego said, “I guess I can't beggars can't be choosers. Your 'vision' tell you how to get inside the school grounds?”

Walking over to the dome, Dave looked at the abyss and responded, “No, but given that the word 'invitation' was explicitly used for all three of us, I'm willing to guess...”

Dave placed his hand up in front of the wall of the dome, and pushed it forward. To his surprise, and everybody else, his hand easily slipped through the darkness. And just easily, he was able to pull his hand back outside. Dave turned around to face the assembled heroes, and placed his hands on his hips with a confident smile on his face.

“It looks like only those that are invited are allowed to enter.” Dave cocked his head sideways towards the wall as he looked at Shego and Jen.

Jen and Shego looked at each other, and the two women walked up to the wall. Both ladies placed their hands adjacent to the dome, and just like Dave, they were able to pass their hands through the darkness. They then pulled their hands back out, and all three of the 'invited' turned to face the rest of Team Go.

“Looks like it's up to me to save the day. Again.” Shego looked at her brothers with discontent. The twins were just staring at the ground in disbelief. Mego was rubbing his neck, having trouble keeping eye contact with his sister, and Hego was groaning on the ground. Shego scoffed, and then turned back to face the wall.

“If you two are coming, then we're going in.” Shego said assertively as she crossed the threshold.

“Yes'm” Jen quickly said, almost like a soldier at attention, following Shego.

Dave looked at the wall and shrugged, “Hello darkness, my old friend...” he muttered before passing through the barrier. Team Go looked on helplessly as the trio braved the darkness. Unbeknownst to the superhero brothers, the swallows from the barricade flew into the dome after Shego, Jen, and Dave.

Time seemed to have no meaning for a moment as the group travelled through complete darkness. The distance between the school grounds and the outside barrier should not have taken this long to traverse. Eventually, shapes started to form in the distance, and the trio found themselves in front of what used to be the Go Academy for Gifted Women.

The buildings and grounds of this historic institute must have been a palatial sight of marble, glass and white plaster highlighted by elegant oak trees once upon a time. Now, everything was ruined, as if an isolated earthquake occurred precisely underneath the school's foundation. The building was a dull grey, and the windows were all broken. A massive fissure had split the school in half, with the entire left side of the school sinking into the ground. The roof had collapsed in certain areas, and all the trees were dead and barren. To highlight the desolation, a heavy layer of snow coated the fractured, uneven grounds while a cold wind swept through the ruins. After observing the school grounds for a moment, it quickly became apparent that it was as if the world was suddenly in greyscale.

“Oh my lord...” Jen said with a shocked tone as she surveyed the devastation.

“Yep.” Dave said. “And this is what will spread if we don't hurry.”

Shego, however, was silent. She glared at what was left of the school grounds with burning fury and marched onwards. Seeing the older woman not react to the wreckage in front of them, Jen sped up her walking pace to match Shego's stride. Dave followed suit, his eyes darting left and right as they walked.

“So... I'm guessing you know who did this, then? You and your brothers were talking like...” Jen started to ask.

“They're a bunch of idiots. They don't have what it takes to handle this.” Shego curtly stated.

“Oh. Okay... So... who's responsible for all this, then?” Jen enquired.

“It's not who they think it is. It can't be. I killed him five years ago.” Shego said with a grim determination.

“That's not exactly a hindrance to some beings.” Dave responded. “Some animosity is so strong, not even death can stop them.”

“Oh, of course... My old enemy is back from the grave to torment me. Why didn't I reach that conclusion?” Shego snarked.

“So you've got enemies that can just... DO this?” Dave said snidely.

As Dave and Shego argued over the existence of the afterlife, Jen was looking around the grounds as the trio walked towards the school. Seeing nothing other than wreckage all around them, Jen eventually looked up to assess the sky. And that's when she saw... _it_.

“Uh, guys?” Jen said concerned. But Shego and Dave were too absorbed in continuing their circular argument.

“GUYS!” Jen exclaimed as she grabbed both Shego and Dave by their arms.

“What?!” they responded.

“I don't think _THAT'S_ the sun!” Jen said as she pointed skyward.

Ceasing their argument, Dave and Shego looked upward, and what greeted them was extremely unnerving. Replacing the sun in the sky was a horrid eye, with a purple sclera surrounding a yellow iris with multiple bizarre pupils. A shocked look crept across Dave's face and Shego's skin paled even more than usual as her eyes widened.

“That... is what gave me and Jen our invitations to this place.” Dave managed to speak out after a minute of silence.

“You mean that _thing_ is what made you vomit tar?!” Jen asked in shock.

“Well... that's not the thing that attacked us five years ago, that's for sure!” Shego blurted out.

While the group was focused on the eye that floated in the sky in place of the sun, they didn't notice a trio of high school girls in Go Academy school uniforms running towards them. The group consisted of a fair-skinned blonde with shoulder length hair and green eyes, a short redhead with blue eyes and long, straight hair with freckles and a noticeable tan, and a tall brunette with brown eyes and wavy hair that fell halfway down her back. It wasn't until the pounding of their feet on the rubble gathered the group's attention. Looking at the panicked students, the disconnect between the living and the world around them was more noticeable, for the girls had clear colour to their bodies in comparison to the grounds. It was obvious that they had endured some horrid trials, for their uniforms consisting of grey blazers and blue skirts were torn, unkempt and filthy, with some odd cuts and bruises on parts of their bodies. Their faces were wide with panic and desperation as they cried out,

“HELP US!!!” cried the redhead.

“GET US OUT OF HERE!!!” yelled the blonde.

“PLEASE!!!” begged the brunette.

Just as the group turned their gaze at the trio of girls running towards them, a foul ray of shadow shot down from the horrid eyeball in the sky as it opened its central pupil. It trapped the three girls in its gaze, highlighting them with a black and white negative appearance, and then they all started to scream in agony. 

Still highlighted by the negative ray, the brunette shot up into the sky, only to fall back down to the ground fast enough to catch fire. Before she hit the ground, she blinked out of existence. Only to coming careening back down towards the ground, still on fire. She then faded away again. And then fell again. It became quickly apparent she was trapped in a loop of eternally falling while on fire that she couldn't escape from.

The redhead had her ankles grabbed by skeletal arms that burst out of the earth that held her in place as she struggled to get free. Heavy chains shot out from the earth and pierced her body, pulling her down as flaming, rotting bodies climbed out of the land and crawled all over her as she screamed “NO! I'VE BEEN GOOD! I'VE BEEN GOOD! DON'T SEND ME DOWN THERE! DON'T SEND ME DOWN THERE! NOOO!!!” as she was dragged into ground.

The blonde grew stiff as her body turned into what appeared to be porcelain. Her face became painted as if she were a massive doll. A wooden marionette handle manifested over her as barbed wire snaked down from the floating apparatus to wrap itself around her wrists and ankles while piercing the top of her head. She then proceeded to pirouette and curtsy in place as tears streamed down her unblinking eyes and blood trickled out from where the wire was coiled around her limbs.

Shego, Jen, and Dave just stared on in horror as the girls were subjected to terrible fates before their eyes. Dave was actually trying to stop himself from getting sick. But then, the darkness from the eye started to move and began to bare down upon them.

“MOVE! MOVE! MOVE!” Jen hollered as the beam of shade drew close. The group ran as fast as they could over the uneven terrain as the blackness followed their path. As they got close to the school's front doors, Shego ignited her hands and blew up the entrance to allow the trio inside. Just as the group crossed the threshold into the school proper, the eye stopped emitting the ray of darkness and the pieces of the blasted entrance rose up and reforged themselves back into a pair of solid doors.

Dave ran up to the locked exit and tried to work the handles. They wouldn't budge. “Move.” Shego stated with her hands still lit up. 

Dave dodged to his left and Shego threw another plasma blast at the doors, but this time, they remained intact. She tried to keep this up, but just like when Hego tried to punch the barrier outside, something was stopping her plasma from reaching the doors.

“What the heck is going on?!” Jen asked frantically. “We've bested cultists, fought monsters and even the caught the occasional serial killer, but THIS is completely different from anything we've ever faced before!”

“This doesn't make sense!” Shego yelled as she extinguished her hands. “The Bogeyman was NEVER capable of something like this!”

“The Bogeyman?” Dave asked. “Is that who you 'killed' before?”

“Yeah! He was just some FREAK in a mask who got his kicks attacking kids! So when he kidnapped MY kid, I tracked him down and tore his head off! Literally!” Shego asserted.

Jen started to compose herself, after hearing Shego's rant. “So the little girl in that photo... She's your daughter?”

“What do you think?” Shego snapped.

“I think whoever or whatever the Bogeyman was before, he's made some kind of deal with some dark power in the underworld to come back for revenge. That... or he wasn't some 'freak' in a mask at all...” Dave stated.

Shego was quiet for a moment. Then she just turned around and faced the dark, empty hallways. With her fists clenched, she asserted, “I don't care who or what's behind all this. They've messed with my kid. NOBODY messes with my kid.”

Jen sighed in contemplation over their situation. She paced for a little bit, before the sight outside a broken window on a wall adjacent to the entrance caught her eye. She pulled out a steel knuckle duster from her belt pouch, placed it on her right hand and began to punch out the rest of the glass from the broken window. Once any glass shards that could have been a hazard were removed, she put her head outside the window. And what she saw made her heart skip a beat. 

“Guys...” Jen said as she called out to Shego and Dave, “I don't think we're in California anymore...”

Shego and Dave walked over to the window Jen was looking out of, and all they say was... nothing. Just an empty, black abyss. The grounds were gone. It was if the school was floating in an empty void. And all of a sudden, all three of them felt very, very small and alone.

“I think this goes without saying, but don't blink when you stare into the abyss.” Dave said as he looked out into the void for a moment before walking back to the entrance.

Shego just looked out at the abyss, her gaze unyielding. She then ignited her hands and stated to the two teenagers, “We need to get moving.”

**Author's Notes**

**Here is chapter four! Now we get into the meat of the story. Sorry for the delay in getting this one posted. Life just sort of... happened. I went three months without my antidepressants due to a shipping error, which ultimately affected my productivity across the board.**

**This chapter was also primarily edited by Legionaire24601 instead of my usual editor, Diana. Diana had her own issues in her offline life, which is not something I can go into great detail about in respect to her privacy.**


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

_The usual boilerplate disclaimer. I do not own Kim Possible. Kim Possible is the intellectual property of the Walt Disney Corporation and the creation of Bob Schooley and Mark McCorkle._

_Jen Credible and Dave Seer are the creations of Blackbird. The Bogeyman is the creation of Trackula/Festum._

“You know, Dave? Sometimes you're too glib for your own good,” Jen stated sarcastically as she turned away from the broken window with the charming view of the empty black void.

“I figured out long ago that you need to find a way to laugh at the horror. It helps keep your mind intact. Somewhat, at least.” Dave shrugged. “Besides, this is a good representation of what I saw back in the warehouse. Or any other time I get a really bad vision. After a certain point, it loses its punch.”

“Charming,” Shego snarked. “I don't suppose your 'visions' told you how to get out of here, oracle-boy?” 

Dave stood still for a moment, his head tilted down. Cupping his chin with his right hand, he thought about his vision from back in Los Diablos. Raising his head after a moment, he said, “My vision showed me that horrid eye that's out in the sky. Except it was actually deeper inside the school, behind an emerald flame.”

Dave looked at Shego, and his gaze turned down towards her hands. “Now that I think about it, those emerald flames were exactly like what happens when you light up your hands, ma'am.”

Shego raised her right hand and ignited it for a moment as she looked down the darkened hallway leading away from the entrance area. “Of course it did...” Shego muttered under her breath and began walking into the school's darkened halls with her ignited hand raised above her head to provide her some light in the darkness.

Seeing Shego walk away from them, Jen began to compose herself. “Okay Dave. Let's get moving. I get the feeling this will be easier if we stick together. We'll find the eye, and we'll figure out a way out of here in no time.”

“Yeah... I don't think time is going to be much of a concern. Or maybe it will be. I can't really tell anymore, because my analogue watch is running backwards.” Dave said as he looked at his wristwatch on his left arm. He raised it to show to Jen that the second and minute hands were indeed running backwards. To double check this phenomena, Jen examined her own watch on her right wrist, and it too was running backwards.

“Oh, great.” Jen said with annoyance as she started to sprint towards Shego, with Dave briskly following her. “So... what? We either have all the time in the world, or we're on a countdown to ambiguous doom?”

“Let's just worry about getting out of here for now.” Dave replied as reassuringly as he could as they caught up to Shego.

As the trio walked through the derelict halls, the devastation became apparent. There were holes in the ceiling, showing the ventilation ducts. A black fluid trickled down the cracked walls and dented lockers, making it look like the school was bleeding in the darkness. That was not counting the rubble that littered the ruined linoleum floors. Since Shego's plasma was their only source of light, everything had a green tint to it as the group explored the hallways. Jen and Dave stayed as close as they could, their faint green outlines being their only indication of distance between them.

It wasn't long before the trio's eyes adjusted to the darkness, and they started to see even more details of their surroundings. Like the occasional swarm of verminous insects such as cockroaches and centipedes crawling over the walls. The pests seemed to be following Shego's light. Yet, they kept their distance. Jen felt uneasy watching the swarms of bugs follow them. But that sense of unease soon turned into a deep pit in her stomach as some of the insects started to break off from the swarms and began to... _write_. 

Using the same scratchy white letters that were on the black envelope and the photo of the little girl inside of it, such charming phrases formed on the walls such as:

_Why me?_

_All things must die... why can't I?_

_I want my mommy!_

_Where are my kids?!_

_THIS ISN'T FAIR!!!_

_Help us..._

“Guys?... Are you _seeing_ this?!” Jen asked with a mild panic to her voice.

The trio stopped in their tracks and realized the writing was starting to appear everywhere on the walls around them. Shego just glared with an unrelenting fury as her glow grew brighter. Dave drew closer to the insects, apparently noticing something about them as Shego raised the illumination around them.

His hand outstretched, Dave said, “Jen, I need your combat knife.” He twitched his fingers in a beckoning manner, telling Jen to hurry.

Jen unclipped the combat knife's leather casing from her belt and handed the blade to Dave's extended hand. Once the knife was in his possession, Dave unsheathed it and placed the tip of the blade in front of a large cockroach the size of an adult man's thumb that was on the wall. The roach crawled onto the metal weapon, and Dave balanced the insect on weapon as he brought the vermin closer to his eyes while keeping the blade as horizontally parallel to his face as he could. What he saw caused him to drop the knife in shock and give out a short yelp of disgust.

“What? What did you see?” Jen asked.

“These insects... they all have human faces!” Dave exclaimed.

There was an anxious pause in the air for a moment before Jen went forward and picked up the combat knife herself to examine the cockroach on the blade. And when she got the roach close enough, she too saw that the insect indeed had a human face... or what was left of it. Jen figured the face belonged to a young Caucasian boy once. But now, his eyes were distorted, forcibly moved to the sides of his head and solid black. Antennae grew out of his nostrils, and Jen could see small mandibles jutting out of his mouth.

The sight was enough for Jen to violently shake the knife to get the cockroach off her blade. She then backed away from the walls, inching closer and closer to Shego. Dave quickly followed suit, and the trio stood surrounded by the cursed vermin. 

“Alright, that's close enough!” Shego shouted as Jen and Dave grew closer to her. She started to blast the swarms of insects with her plasma, scorching most of them to ash. Whatever parts of the swarms she missed immediately started to crawl towards the burning remains of their fellows. The roach that was on Jen's blade crawled into the path of Shego's plasma bursts. As it skittered towards the blazing energy, it wrote a final message on the ground:

_Thank you..._

The smell of burning insect flesh that filled the area soon subsided along with the emerald flames, leaving the trio alone in the ruined hallways once again. The silence of the next few moments hung in the air until finally, Jen spoke up,

“Okay, what was that?!”, her voice clearly conveying her panic and disgust for what just happened.

Dave rubbed the back of his neck, clearly at a loss for words at the moment. Eventually, he spoke up,

“I'm guessing we've crossed into 'The Dusk Area', where life becomes a horror movie. Those roaches reminded me of the ending to the original version of 'The Moth'. You know, the scene where the male lead has his head on the body of a moth and he's trapped in a web as a spider descends upon, ready to feast?”

“What are you trying to imply with _that_ charming image, vision-boy?” Shego snapped, her nerves clearly starting to show signs of stress.

Dave walked forward to the remains of the roach swarm and prodded it with the tip of his left foot. Immediately on contact, the burnt remnants of the swarm dissolved into dust and wafted through the halls.

“I'm saying I think we just came across some of this 'Bogeyman's' previous victims”.

.....

Holly's nerves were shot. Ever since that horrid eye opened up in the wall and swallowed Agni whole, it was as if she was trapped in a nightmare she couldn't wake up from. Holly had tried to find the other teachers, to try and rescue the students. But it was starting to seem she was the only person left in the school who was “whole”, for a lack of a better term.

The first classroom she came across was Mr. Johnson's. Holly got along with the English teacher well enough, but they didn't know that much about each other outside of work. Still, with everything that was happening, Holly felt that it was their duty as teachers to band together for the sake of the students in time of crisis. Unfortunately, Mr. Johnson was not available to help her.

As soon as she crossed the threshold of the classroom's doorway, darkness washed over her. Then, a klaxon just like the emergency alarms she heard as child cascaded throughout the emptiness. When the abyss finally receded, Holly realized that the classroom she was standing in did not belong in Go Academy. On top of everything being in black and white, the general aesthetic of the room made it feel like she was in the 70s. The room appeared empty, but the whimpering of children could be heard throughout the room.

Scanning the room from the entrance way, Holly soon realized that there were students cowering beneath the desks. When she knelt down to get a look at the students, she realized that they were not human. At least, not completely. They were in a monochrome state like the rest of the room, but their appearance seemed to imply that they were made of smoke and ash. Black trails of smoky vapor wafted upwards from their bodies, while their skin seemed cracked and ready to dissolve at the slightest touch.

Their clothes definitely belonged to the 70s. When Holly looked behind the teacher's desk, she saw another shadow man with an afro hairstyle, sunglasses, a frilly shirt and bell bottom pants. He seemed to be praying for protection just under his breath. None of the shadow people in the room seemed to acknowledge her presence. Aside from the constant blaring of the klaxon and the complete absence of colour, the classroom could be mistaken for tranquil.

Holly felt a chill crawl up her spine. These shadow people seemed resigned to some horrible fate, but she didn't understand what it could possibly be. Then, some movement out of the corner of her eye caught her attention. A child had emerged from underneath his desk. But unlike the rest of the room's population, he was not a shadow person. He looked like an ordinary little boy from the 70s. There was full colour to his skin, hair and clothes, as well as his body seeming to appear more solid. His brunette hair was styled into a bob haircut. He was also wearing a striped blue and orange shirt and brown pants with sneakers. 

It took Holly a few moments to recognize the boy in front of her. She'd never seen pictures of him when he was a child, but it had to be him,

“Mr. Johnson? Clyde?” she called out to the little boy.

Mr, Johnson's young self didn't pay attention to Holly. He just got up and walked towards the windows on the far side of the room. He looked out towards the black and white city around them, and Holly's gaze soon followed suit. Aside from the klaxon blaring all around them, the city seemed peaceful. But then, it happened.

A brilliant flash lit up in the centre of the downtown area. Holly was temporarily blinded for a moment, but when her eyes adjusted, she soon saw a mushroom cloud form in front of her. The horror of the sight barely had time to register in her mind before a shockwave of dust and heat rushed towards the school. Holly futilely tried to shield herself with her hands, but all that afforded her was the sight of her skin cracking, peeling and ultimately melting off her bones as she was atomized.

The pain was unlike anything she ever felt before in her life. It quickly became so extreme she eventually went numb and everything around her turned solid white. She thought she was dead. But then Holly heard _his_ voice. That horrible, metallic voice that taunted her as it abducted Agni.

**_“This is not for you.”_ **

The white nothingness around her faded, and Holly found herself back inside the ruined hallways of Go Academy. She was whole again, no sign of any damage whatsoever on her person. The same could not be said of her mind, for she had just lived through a nuclear explosion. Shaken, she collapsed to the her hands and knees, desperately trying to catch her breath. Her heart was beating so fast, she thought she was about to have a heart attack.

Eventually regaining her strength, Holly managed to stand back up. She had to crawl across the filthy floor of the ruined hallway to become adjacent to a wall so she had something to prop herself against. But she found her way back to standing on her own two feet. 

“Lesson learned.” Holly said to herself as she gazed at the door to Mr. Johnson's room, “Don't go into the classrooms.”

Holly limped her way down the hallway for a while, leaning against the wall as she went. After a certain point her vitality returned to her, and she was no longer short of breath or needed the wall to hold herself upright. Since the classrooms were not an option for help, Holly began to assess her situation.

“Okay, Holly. You're a smart girl. You need to figure something out to get through this madness.” she said as she tried to assure herself as her mind raced with anxious thoughts.

The memory of Agni being grabbed by the being inside the horrid eye flashed through Holly's mind. Realizing that it was still somewhere in the school, a simple truth dawned on her,

“I need something to defend myself with.”

Holly pondered on what was available in the school that she could use to reasonably protect herself against any other physical threat. The immediate things that came to mind were the equipment in the home economics classroom and the gymnasium. She would also need a light source and some first aid supplies. Unfortunately, the gym and home ec. rooms were on the other end of the school.

“Guess I'm heading towards the office area for now,” she said under her breath. The nurse's room was close to the principal's office, and it was there she could get a flashlight and other supplies before she headed towards gym and home ec. rooms. Hopefully, she would be able to save some students along the way.

Holly cautiously proceeded down the hallway towards the centre of the school where the principal's office was located. She stayed close to the wall, but didn't press herself directly against it. Agni's abduction made it clear that not even the walls were safe. Still, she needed to be careful turning corners. She had no idea what was lurking in the grounds.

Holly's caution was proven necessary once she turned a few corners. The soft whimpering of a student could be heard around the next bend, and remembering what happened in Mr. Johnson's classroom, Holly slowly peeked around the corner to her left before crossing the bend.

What she saw broke her heart. It was a girl that belonged to the middle school grades. She didn't recognize the girl in question. Whatever features that would have been identifiable were obscured by massive pimples that had covered her body. The only feature that remained untouched was her long black hair that was tied into pigtails that were hung low on her head.

The pimple-covered girl was sitting down on the ground, her back to the wall and her arms wrapped around her knees. She was surrounded by shadow versions of other students from Go Academy. All of them were taunting her about her skin condition, and not surprisingly, the leader of the hecklers was a copy of Cassandra King alongside her friends Grace Blackwood and Shelly Wolfe.

“Of course it's those girls leading the charge. It's always them...” Holly said with disappointment in her voice. As she muttered the words, the taunts became more vocal towards the poor girl crouched against the wall.

_“Look at the freak!”_

_“Ew, she's leaking!”_

_“Did you fall in a grease trap or something? So gross!”_

_“Don't touch her! Maybe she's got cooties!”_

_“Pizza face! Pizza face!”_

Hearing all these cruel taunts, Holly's sense of disappointment quickly turned to anger. She composed herself and confidently strode towards the crowd of shadow children with an angry scowl on her face.

“ENOUGH!” Holly shouted, “Shame on all of you! How DARE all of you make fun of something she can't control?”

The shadow children stopped their jeers and stared at Holly for a moment. She quickly lost her composure when she realized that the children in front of her all had solid black eyes that were emitting thick, dark smoke. But the soft whimpers of the girl on the floor drove Holly forward.

She walked in front of the shadow children, placing herself between the shades and the crying girl. Holly glared at cruel little spectres in front of her before kneeling down to bring herself to the level of the acne riddled child.

“Sweetie... Sweetie, you have to listen to me,” Holly said to the bullied girl next to her. “Acne comes and acne goes. It's not a reflection of your worth as a human being. It's something all children go through as they grow up. Even I had some pretty bad zits when I was a little girl.”

Her words seemed to reach the poor child, as she lifted her head and turned her face towards Holly. “Bad days come. But they also pass. And their words may sting, but what they say about you says more about their poor character than it does of yours.”

Holly lifted her head back up to glare at the shadow children. What she saw made her heart race a little. The shades were smiling. Smiles so wide their flesh was cracking and splitting all the way up to their ears. Holly was getting unnerved, but she would not leave this child to her tormentors.

“You ALWAYS have your own personal power over your life. Bullies only have power over you if you let them. The moment you stand up to them, they will show you their true character: that they are petty cowards who are so insecure that they feel the need to belittle others in order to make themselves feel better.”

The shades began to laugh at that. The voices that escaped their lips was not the sound of little girls, but a high metallic pitch. _His_ voice. That is when the faces of all the shadow girls crumbled into dust, revealing solid bone-white masks with no facial features whatsoever.

**_“Well played. It is rare these days to find individuals such as yourself. Who, when push comes to shove, are truly willing to stand up for what they believe in when faced with something more powerful than themselves.”_ **

Upon seeing the Bogeyman's mask in place of all the shadow childrens faces, Holly hugged the sniffling girl close, preparing to shield the child with her body if need be. The image of that horrid, vacant mask atop the bodies of schoolgirls was quickly eroding Holly's mental fortitude. But she would not allow this monster to claim another student. Not on her watch.

**_“Of course, it remains to be seen if your charge has taken your little lesson to heart.”_ **

The shades all tilted their heads to the side, as if they were musing over something in their minds. Holly glared at the Bogeyman's shades, waiting for him to try something. When all of a sudden, the girl she was clutching pushed herself away and stood up to face the Bogeyman.

Sniffling, she said, “I don't know what kind of monster you are, but you're no better than a bunch of mean girls who like to make people feel miserable.”

That statement caused the Bogeyman to break out in laughter. But not in a mocking tone as Holly had anticipated. Instead, the shades the Bogeyman was manifesting as all clapped in unison before bowing in respect.

**_“Now that is a lesson well learned.”_ **

The shades all snapped the fingers of their right hands in unison. As if by command, the pimples covering the girl's body faded away. Her features no longer obscured. Holly recognized the child as Diana Chen, a student of hers from a couple of years ago.

Diana looked at her hands in amazement before feeling her face in glee. She then turned to hug Holly with a cheerful giggle escaping her smiling lips. Holly hugged Diana right back before returning her gaze to the Bogeyman shades.

The blank masks had all splintered open to feature that unnerving smile suspended in darkness. He then had all of his shades raise their right hands in front of their bodies and snapped their fingers yet again. Once the motion was completed, Diana dissolved into black dust in Holly's arms.

“NO!” Holly screamed as she desperately tried to gather up the dust that used to be Diana. As the grains of ash slipped through her fingers, she fell to her knees and began sobbing in despair. As Holly placed her hands on the floor, the shades all began to laugh. This time in a clear mocking tone.

**_“Oh, Holly. What kind of fiend do you think I am? Diana learned her lesson. There was no need for her to remain here. She had to leave us. Now... Now she is no longer suffering from her fears and doubts. She is free.”_ **

A ferocious snarl worked its way across Holly's face. “YOU TWISTED, INHUMAN MONSTER!!!” she screamed as she lunged towards the shades in front of her.

Just as she made contact, the shadow children all crumbled to dust. Just like Diana did. The Bogeyman's soft chuckle echoed throughout the now empty hallway.

**_“Run now, sweet Holly. Your students are waiting for you.”_ **

As the Bogeyman's laughter faded, Holly let out an anguished yell of frustration before breaking down sobbing again. She didn't have the time to fully process what happened in front of her, as she soon heard the shuffling and scraping of something moving further down the hallway. Fear and panic quickly took place in her mind, forcing Holly to start running down the opposite end of the hallway.

The things Holly saw as she ran through the school wore her down emotionally. She passed students whose bodies were covered in mouths that blurted out their deepest secrets. Then there was the sport team members who were stuck in wheelchairs, apparently paralyzed from the neck down. Every time she tried to interact with these students they were either so lost in their fears they didn't acknowledge her, or she got through to them only for the Bogeyman to show up and turn them into dust just like Diana. 

Then there were the times she would cross a hazard that blocked off her progress towards the principal's office. Pretty soon, the school's familiar hallways began to feel like a labyrinthine trap. Holly's perception of her surroundings soon started to play tricks on her mind, as whenever she was forced to backtrack, the environments of the school had transformed without her looking. A hallway that was once previously empty was now covered in bees the size of house cats that had the Bogeyman's mask instead of eyes, or the floors had fallen away to reveal a deep crevasse under the building filled with... _something_ moving at the bottom.

One hazard in particular was a mass of water completely filling a hallway from roof to ceiling, but not spilling out into connecting sections of the school. It was if she had come across a massive aquarium instead of a hallway, but there was no glass keeping the water in place. Holly looked upon the suspended water with hesitation, unsure of what horrors lay in wait under the dark surface. It wasn't long before the silhouette of a human body grew closer to the surface of water right in front of Holly.

The shadowed body burst out of the water, and it was another student. It was one of the high school students, and given that she didn't recognize the girl in question, Holly assumed she had to be a recent transfer to the Academy. The student's long chestnut coloured hair was heavy and wet, clinging to her body as she thrashed desperately to escape the water.

“HELP ME!!! FOR HEAVEN'S SAKE, HELP ME!!!,” the student screamed.

Just as Holly began to extend her arm to pull the student out of the water, another silhouette began to form behind the panicked student suspended in the water. Holly barely had the time to step back far enough to avoid the massive shark head that burst out of the water, it's mouth completely surrounding the student's entire body.

The look of terror on the student's face as the shark's mouth slammed shut around her burned itself into Holly's mind. As Holly took a couple of shocked steps backward, the flesh of the shark's head peeled back, leaving it's teeth floating in darkness. The shadows retreated, revealing the Bogeyman's mask yet again. He chuckled with amusement before pulling his head back into the depths of the water.

After seeing such a horrific sight, Holly immediately took off running in the opposite direction. It took her wandering a few hallways before a dreadful realization dawned on her. The layout of the school was changing. None of the floors of the Academy had so many bends and turns like the corridors she just ran through.

It had become difficult to tell which floor Holly was on after a certain point, for as soon she found a stairwell to descend it quickly became a loop of stairs that took several minutes to traverse. It wasn't helping matters that trying to walk down these stairs only wound up bringing Holly to the top floor of the building. It took another nerve-wracking exploration of the third floor to find another stairwell. Thankfully, she found the cafeteria on the floor this staircase led to. Which meant she had finally reached the ground floor.

Her experiences thus far urged her not to cross the cafeteria doors. Holly knew she should only risk entering a room if it had supplies she truly needed to survive what had become of the school. Despite the cafeteria having potential tools with which to defend herself, she did not want to subject herself to whatever horrors the Bogeyman brought to life inside an eating establishment. With that in mind, she started to make her way towards the principal's office in the centre of the ground floor. Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness of the school at this point, and she was beginning to notice details around her that she hadn't realized were there before.

The most disturbing thing she found was a bunch scratchy white sentences covering the walls, floor and ceiling all around her that were surrounded by what appeared to be scorch marks. It took Holly a moment to realize it, but the scorch marks had a faint luminescence to them that she hadn't seen in the school thus far. Tiny embers of what appeared to be green fire. That's when the idea entered her head.

“Agni? AGNI, ARE YOU ALRIGHT?!” Holly cried out to the darkness. She knew this was a foolish idea, but if it meant saving Agni...

“Agni, if you're out there, follow the sound of my voice! It's me! Ms. Allen!” Holly frantically walked up and down the hallway that contained the scorch marks and white words. It wasn't long until she saw a faint green glow come moving towards her from the hallway around the next corner.

“Agni! Thank heaven you're..”

Holly was soon cut off from her cries as a ball of green plasma shot past her head. Yelping in shock, she quickly fell prone to the floor. The green light grew closer and brighter, and she also heard running footsteps along with the growing light. Multiple footsteps, it sounded like. As Holly raised her head to get a look at what was approaching her, she could hardly believe what she saw.

The green light was being produced by the raised fist of a woman in her late 20s to early 30s wearing a green and black catsuit with a harlequin dazzle pattern. Her long, raven hair reached her waist and framed her beautiful face quite well. Holly thought she would be even more attractive if her expression wasn't so angry it felt like the woman could kill with a look.

Holly, of course, knew exactly who the woman in front of her was, “Shego?” she asked in amazement, “What are you doing here?”

Shego quickly knelt down, grabbed Holly by the collar of her blouse as she rose back up and brought the teacher's face close to her own. “Never you mind. WHY are you crying out for MY kid?!” she violently enquired as she began to shake Holly senseless.

The other footsteps Holly heard earlier soon caught up to Shego and two teenagers Holly had never seen before joined up with the two women. One of the teens was a young man with short, messy brown hair with brown eyes. He wore a red superhero t-shirt under a brown leather jacket with blue jeans and sneakers. The other teenager was a young lady with shoulder-length black hair with in a blue sweater with khaki pants. She quickly got close to Shego and placed her hand on the arm Shego was using to hold Holly's collar.

“Ms. Shego, I don't think threatening the first survivor we find with violence is going to get us through this any easier,” the teen girl said as she tried to diffuse the situation.

The young man in the group placed himself adjacent from the girl, his attention on Shego as well. “Perhaps introductions are in order before we go all 'Grimy Freddie' on new faces, hmm?”

Shego's eyes darted between looking at the two teenagers before sighing in annoyance and releasing Holly from her grasp. Holly promptly moved back a step and composed herself. She then extended her hand towards Shego in an attempt to be civil despite the unpleasant first impressions.

“I'm Holly Allen, Agni's History teacher. She's told me about you.”

**Author's Notes**

**So here's Chapter Five, finally. I actually got started on this chapter just before Christmas, but I ran into computer problems right on New Year's Day and it took me two months to resolve the issue.**

**Many thanks to both Blackbird and Trackula/Festum for allowing me the use of their characters for this story.**


	6. Chapter 6

** Chapter Six **

_The usual boilerplate disclaimer. I do not own Kim Possible. Kim Possible is the intellectual property of the Walt Disney Corporation and the creation of Bob Schooley and Mark McCorkle._

_Jen Credible and Dave Seer are the creations of Blackbird. The Bogeyman is the creation of Trackula/Festum._

“What do you _mean_ Agni's told you about me?!” Shego snarled through her gritted teeth as she stared down the dishevelled teacher standing before her.

It was clear that the woman before her, Holly Allen had been through some trials of her own before she had found Shego's group. Her black pantyhose were torn in some places and her shoes were scuffed. There were thick, black oily stains on her burgundy blazer and white blouse and her auburn hair, while obviously styled into a professional ponytail that left her bangs to frame her face, was coming undone. Her fair skin was smudged with some grime and it was also clearly obvious she had been crying, as the makeup around her eyes was starting to run.

Despite her current appearance, she was doing an admirable job of keeping herself composed in front of an angry superhuman, “It's... been a _very_ bad day for everybody here. But I am afraid poor Agni has had the worst of it.”

Green plasma enveloped both of Shego's hands. “What. Happened?” She snarled, directly into Holly's face.

In an instance, Jen had one hand on each woman's shoulder, pushing them apart as best she could, “Miss Shego, she's not the enemy here.”

Dave worked his way up, physically placing himself in between the two adults. With his back to Holly while he faced Shego, “Call me crazy, but I think this lady could help answer some of our questions, if you would just drop the Bad Cop routine.”

Holly cocked her eyebrows as Dave said the word 'lady', “Lady?” she asked out loud with an incredulous tone. “I'm 26!” she asserted.

“NOT IMPORTANT!” Shego snarled as she rounded in on Holly again. “What happened to Agni?!”

“She was taken...” She muttered, barely audible as she hung her head in shame.

“What was that?!”

“She was... she was taken. I tried to save her, but with everything going on, I couldn't... I couldn't...” Holly mumbled as she gripped her shaking shoulders. 

Shego pushed past Dave and threw him to the ground, grabbing Holly by her blazer. She raised her ignited fist over Holly's head ready to strike a blow, but when she saw Holly's eyes, illuminated in green and full of genuine remorse, she stopped.

An exhausted sigh slipped past Shego's lips as she released her grip on Holly yet again. She then turned her back to to the woman, and walked a few steps away with her head down and her hands on her hips. 

The silence hung in the air as the assembled group composed themselves. 

Dave got back to his feet and wiped the debris and filth off the seat of his jeans. 

Holly's composed demeanour was beginning to crack, however. Recounting her failure to save Agni, let alone any of the students, had left her on the verge of tears. She tried to retain her dignity by taking some short breaths while she rubbed her eyes with her left hand.

Seeing the dishevelled teacher so close to breaking down, Jen stepped up to her right side and softly said, “For what it's worth, I wish I had teachers that cared as much as you at my school.”

Holly gave Jen a short contemplative look before wrapping her arms around the teenaged girl in a short, quick hug. “Oh! Okay, this is happening...” Jen blurted out in shock with her hands kept suspended in midair as Holly embraced her.

Realizing that Jen seemed mildly uncomfortable with the sudden hug, Holly swiftly stopped her display of affection and moved back a step. “I'm so sorry! It's... been a rough day. And a rough couple of years too...” she started, but trailed off, lost in thought.

Shego snorted and turned back around again to face the group. The impromptu display of vulnerability had left her bewildered and annoyed. She scowled and raised an eyebrow, but when she opened her mouth to begin to say her piece, but she quickly shut it again as a sound she could describe as someone banging a pipe rang in the distance.

“You hear it too?” Dave asked Shego as the banging became more pronounced.

Jen and Holly were quiet as well. Holly in particular looked spooked, her eyes wide open with anxiety. She began to walk backwards, back the way she came before she had crossed paths with the group. Noticing this, Jen turned her attention back to Holly.

“What? What is it?”

“I don't know... But it's not safe to stay here. It's not safe anywhere anymore. We have to move!” Holly shouted as she turned around and began to run.

Seeing Holly make a break for it, Jen quickly followed suit. “Jen! Wait up!” Dave shouted as he gave chase as well. Shego was ready to stand her ground, but the sound of heavy footsteps began echo in the hallways in addition to the sound of the pipe. She weighed her options in her head, and elected to turn around and join the rest of the group in their flight.

Since she was the one with the most combat experience, Shego quickly caught up with the group and even took the lead in the escape. “We need a place to regroup! Is there a room we can use to take cover or something?!” she shouted as she ran.

“The classrooms aren't safe!” Holly answered, “Last room I entered I wound up being atomized when a nuclear missile detonated!”

“Wait, seriously? How is that possible?” Jen exclaimed.

“Not the time for 20 questions, Jen!” Dave shouted as the group crossed through the atrium, “How many classrooms have you tried entering, uh... Miss?”

“Well, just the one, to be completely honest...” Holly admitted as they ran down another hallway.

“Then WHY are we running like we have no options?!” Shego snapped as they turned a corner.

“I didn't really want to test my luck after I was atomized by the first room I entered!”

“Maybe the God of Random Chance will smile on us if we tried another room? And if this time we all went it together?” Dave contemplated as he looked backwards. Suddenly he smacked hard into Jen, who had stopped running and was seemingly frozen in fear.

“Oof! Jen, what's the-!.. Deal?..” Dave blurted out as he looked past his friend and saw the monsters filling the hallway in front of them. A group of what could only be described as a bunch of bald, faceless dolls wearing the Go Academy uniform were swarming around a blonde teenaged girl who had her back pressed tightly against the window wall opposite a classroom door. The poor child was crying her eyes out as the dolls pulled her hair.

“Please... please let me go...” She begged and whimpered.

In one swift motion, as a group each doll yanked so hard, that the entirety of her skin peeled off the girl's body in one heavy, wet, horrifying motion, revealing her insides to be covered in a black oily substance. As the viscous fluid dripped off her body and her former skin dropped to ground with slimy _thud_ , the horror revealed not a skinless girl, but another faceless doll. It rose and joined the group that had previously swarmed around it. In unison, each of the dolls' heads turned to face Shego's little group as they bolted down the hallway.

The thundering footsteps and banging pipes were still bearing down on them, even from beyond the atrium they had just crossed. Realizing that they were trapped between a rock and a hard place, with the noise behind them and the dolls before them, Shego opted to try her chances in the first classroom she saw. She threw a few plasma bolts to light up the hallway in front of them, hoping to set enough of the school on fire to create a wall of emerald flame to keep the dolls at bay as the group could fortify themselves in the classroom.

“Inside the classroom!” Shego hollered, “We can fight them off if we can hold onto a choke point!”

“I'm telling you, it's not safe in the classrooms!” Holly began to protest.

“I don't think we have a choice right now, Miss!” Jen asserted as she grabbed Holly by the wrist and began dragging her towards the classroom door. Dave quickly followed suit, grabbing Holly's other wrist and pulling her inside.

Shego swung the classroom door open to let the rest of the group enter the dark classroom. As soon as they were inside, Shego threw out a few more blasts of plasma towards where they once stood, hoping to bar the path of whatever lumbering brute was making those heavy footsteps. She then slammed the door behind herself, leaving everyone in darkness.

Almost instantly, the ceiling pressed down on the group, leaving them almost pinned on top of earthy soil. Still, they were not completely trapped. There was enough room to crawl, and there was a source of air, musty as it was. The lighting was non-existent, however. Everyone squirmed uncomfortably, trying to manuever despite the positions they had been forced to assume in the now confined space.

“Jen? Where are you?” Dave asked as he began to crawl on his belly, his hand outstretched.

“To whoever that hand belongs to, move it or lose it!” Shego snapped from somewhere close by.

Jen let out a sheepish chuckle of embarrassment, “Oops... sorry...” 

“Miss Allen? Are you here?” Dave called out.

“I'm here. Though I don't think we're alone. Be quiet and listen.”

The group grew silent and indeed they did hear something. Frightened whispers and murmurs from at least two people not all that far away. The voices were female, and they were speaking some foreign language. German, maybe. Pretty soon, the sound of thumping footsteps could be heard right above everybody, along with the creaking of wooden floorboards from the weight of multiple people. These new people were definitely speaking German, their voices harsh and aggressive. The clash and clatter of objects above them made it clear they were looking for something... 

Or someone...

“Oh, no...” Holly moaned.

“Is that.. what I _think_ it is up there?” Jen asked in a nervous tone.

“Let's see... We're under some floorboards, pressed into the dirt, and some angry German guys are wrecking stuff right above our heads. Maybe it's the Easter Bunny?” Shego snarked in a bitter voice.

“Great. So we're trapped in an unoriginal cliche.” Jen said in a testy tone as she squirmed under the floorboards.

“I know, right? I mean, Nazis? Come on, that's getting old even in comic books.” Dave quipped.

Shego snapped her fingers and a small spark of plasma ignited. The green light given off confirmed her suspicions of being trapped beneath some floorboards. Five feet from the cramped group were two teenaged girls wearing dirty clothes that were definitely from the 1930s. The looks of fear and anxiety on their faces were haunting in the emerald glow, but even as the vibrant luminescence washed over their bodies, they didn't register the congested group.

Instead, their eyes were darting back forth, watching the floorboards above them as best they could. It took Shego a couple of moments to realize it, but only one of the young girls in front of them was in colour. The other young lady was in monochrome, her eyes solid black and emitting dark smoke. 

“Careful” Holly warned, “Shadow people like this can transform into the Bogeyman in a moment's notice.”

The mere mention of the Bogeyman drove Shego into a fury. The idea that she could interrogate the Bogeyman if she could reach him through his puppet consumed her mind. Her little spark of plasma had now swelled into a bright ball of green light and she was rabidly trying to crawl herself closer to the shadow girl in front of her. The constraints of the crawlspace were doing little to hinder her advance towards her target.

“WHERE IS SHE?!” Shego roared venomously as she grabbed the shadow girl's face with her ignited hand. “WHERE IS AGNI?!”

But as soon as the plasma hit the girl, her face exploded with darkness that consumed everybody present. For a moment, everyone was suspended in an endless abyss, but then the sensation of solid ground could be felt under their feet once again. They were no longer pinned underneath the crawlspace, and indeed, seemed to be standing upright again. As the shadows receded, they soon found themselves in dingy back alley. Monochromatic brick walls with faded posters peeling off their surface framed a grimy pavement road littered with trashcans, boxes and wooden pallets.

From what could be seen of the city the alley was located in, everything was grey. Smoke was billowing upwards from different areas, and the sound of gunshots could be heard in the distance. Planes were flying overhead, zooming towards some unseen battle. The oppressive atmosphere seemed to weigh down the group even more than the crawlspace.

“Lord have mercy...” Jen said absentmindedly as she observed her new surroundings.

Dave was at a loss for words at actually seeing a city being torn apart by war. Shego put on an air of indifference, but unbeknownst to the complete strangers around her, the sight was affecting her. Holly had her hands to her mouth in shock with her eyes wide, the implications of where they were racing through her mind.

“I've taught history for years,” she said, “But teaching history is so different from actually seeing it happen before your eyes.”

The group were silent for a moment amidst the sounds of war. The moment seemed so surreal that when the clatter of trash moving further down the alley sounded, it snapped them out of their state of shocked horror. Almost instantly, their heads turned sharply towards the source of the sound. It was difficult to see at first, but among the dusty trash at the other end of the alley was the faintest splash of colour.

Recognizing that the colour was indicative of a real person instead of a nightmare, Holly ran towards the pile of rubbish. She quickly pulled away the garbage, revealing the young girl from under the crawlspace. She was filthy, twitchy and a nervous wreck. She was wearing what once could have been described as nice clothes, but even for all the wear and tear Holly's outfit had taken over the course of the day, she looked like a supermodel in comparison to the ruined clothing this poor girl was wearing. Her brown hair was stringy and unkempt, a further sign of her deteriorating mental state. 

It took her a moment to recognize the person in front of her, but remembering what happened with Mr. Johnson sparked a realization in Holly's mind.

“Ms. Baum?”

“You know her?” Dave asked as he joined up with Holly at the end of the alley.

“I think so... The Ms. Baum I know is a senior citizen who immigrated to the US from Germany long before I started my teaching career. She's one of the math teachers here, but I've never had much of a chance to get to know her. Though the rumour mill among the faculty has always been of the opinion that she never really opens up to anybody...”

“Given what we're seeing, I'm guessing there was a good reason for her not being more... forthcoming.” Jen said as she joined up with everybody.

Shego crossed her arms as she started up the alleyway, herself. But before she could even cover half the length the back street, her mercenary experience kicked in. She heard someone- Scratch that! A lot of people running towards them. She immediately turned on her heels, braced herself for whatever was coming their way, and ignited her hands in anticipation.

Her about-face did not go unnoticed by everyone else in the alley. Jen quickly donned both of her steel knuckledusters, ran up to stand by Shego's side and assumed a defensive kickboxing pose.

“Kiddo, I appreciate your gusto, but I think men armed with rifles is a bit out of your league.”

“I'd rather stand my ground than let people I care about be hurt.”

Shego sighed, “If you're so dead-set on this, at least hide behind some of the trash so you can jump them.”

“The garbage is sounding pretty good right now, Jen!” Dave called out from the other end of the alley. Jen turned her back towards Dave's location, only to see his head peeking out from behind a trash can. Holly, meanwhile, was staying by Ms. Baum's side over in the rubbish pile. 

Her mind racing, Holly tried to weigh her options in her head. She wasn't about to abandon Ms. Baum, but she had no ability to fight anything, let alone what felt like advancing soldiers. At the moment, it felt like young Dave had the best idea. So Holly did what she could to hide herself as close as she could to Ms. Baum.

Holly could hear Ms. Baum mutter something under her breath in a quick, panicked tone. Unfortunately, it was in what had to be German. As much as Holly loved history, she had never gotten around to picking up Germany as a second language. Realizing that Ms. Baum needed to be as quiet as she could be, Holly reached out from her hiding spot and placed her right hand on Ms. Baum's shoulder from behind to support as silently as she could.

With a twitchy jump, Ms. Baum spun around. It seemed like it was the first time she really understood that Holly and indeed, the rest of the group were even there. She stared at Holly for a moment, seemingly lost in her thoughts until slowly the realization began to work its way onto her face.

“Holly?” Ms. Baum asked, “What are you doing here, Frau?” 

Holly raised her left index finger to her mouth and gave a quick _shush_ sound in response, along with the soft whispering of, “It's not safe to talk right now. Be quiet.”

Back at the midpoint of the alley, Shego was ready for a fight. Dave's prompting had convinced Jen to take Shego's advice, resulting in her finding cover behind some wooden pallets that were propped up against one of the alley walls. Jen herself was crouching, waiting for Shego to take the initiative in the upcoming battle. Jen had fought men with weapons before, but never soldiers. However, compared to everything else she's had to deal with up to this point in the school, and especially with what she had seen in the school so far, human soldiers were a welcome change of pace.

The sounds of thundering footfalls could no longer be denied, a squad of about fourteen soldiers had turned the corner, filling up the exit on the far side of the alley. The situation was clear now. Despite the telltale skin of ash and black, smoking eyes, the soldiers in front of them were clearly in the image of Nazis. 

They were wearing monochromatic versions of the M40 tunic that the frontline soldiers would wear and they were equipped with Karabiner 98k rifles, all of which were aimed down the alleyway directly at Shego. Shego, for her part, was not intimidated in the slightest. If anything, her plasma seemed to be glowing brighter as a confident smirk crept across her face. The surreal experience almost felt like one of the showdowns they always had in old spaghetti western films, but there was no giddy anticipation of a dramatic shootout to be found here. Only the heavy atmosphere of war and the unknown loomed around the group.

The Shadow Nazis kept their rifles trained on Shego, but did not fire. Shego was also not willing to make a move until they did. Shadow people or no, she didn't want to risk finding out if those rifles fired actual bullets. The tension in the air got tighter and tighter, until the light clapping of leather gloves could be heard off the side of the alley barred by the Shadow Nazis.

A small opening formed directly between the 14 soldiers, evenly splitting their numbers into groups of seven. A tall officer dressed in the iconic black uniform of the SS marched out to fill the empty spot provided by the Shadow Nazis. His uniform was all leather, from his knee high boots to his military-style peaked cap. The only things that weren't solid black were the faded grey and white armband emblazoned with the swastika, the Iron Cross pinned neatly to his right breast, and his mask. The same horrid, blank white mask that had haunted Shego's dreams for the past five years.

**_“Hello Natasha. How is the family?”_ **

Seeing the Bogeyman in front of her caused something to snap in the back of Shego's mind. The sounds of war around them faded away, drowned out by the sound of her own heartbeat throbbing in her ears. Her eyes grew wide with fury as she let out a ferocious yell, the plasma in her hands flaring like a pair of small emerald suns going into supernova. She placed her hands parallel to each other, focusing her glow into a plasma sphere the size of a basketball and sent the massive bolt flying from her palms as if it were fired from a cannon.

The plasma bolt detonated upon impact with the Shadow Nazis assembled at the alley's end, sending most of them flying. The Bogeyman himself seemed to be completely untouched by Shego's attack, standing amidst the emerald flames resolute and composed, his hands behind his back. His chest rose and fell as he took in a deep, rattling breath.

**_“I had almost forgotten how badly I have craved this sensation. It feels... nostalgic. Do you not think so, Natasha?”_ **

An inarticulate, frenzied roar erupted from Shego's mouth as she charged the Bogeyman, her ignited, razor-sharp gloves ready to tear into his body. The Bogeyman, for his part, simply sidestepped her assault and deftly dodged her every blow. Shego threw out kicks and claw swipes in a desperate bid to get the Bogeyman off balance and to lay on as much hurt on him as she could deliver in order to get him to answer her questions. But unlike their last fight at the construction site, the Bogeyman was not responding with strikes of his own. He seemed more inclined to dance with her among the flames.

While Shego was engaging the Bogeyman in combat, the Shadow Nazis she had knocked down with her initial blast were starting to regain themselves and rise back up to their feet. As opposed to using their arms and legs to support themselves, an unknown force seemed to be directing them to rise via their chests. Their limbs snapping and twitching as they got back into position to attack.

But Jen was not going to let them get the jump on Shego. Before the Shadow Nazis could fully get themselves upright, she dashed into their immediate space and began to deliver her own blows with her knuckledusters. The first Shadow Nazi she struck was halfway to its feet when Jen landed a hit between the Shadow Nazi's legs in its groin. She then followed with a swift kick to the neck as it reeled down from her initial blow to get it back on the ground. Just as it fell to its side, Jen swiftly took out her combat knife and stabbed the thing in its temple.

Jen's attack caused the Shadow Nazi to burst into a shower of black dust and fade away. Immediately after the first one was down, she charged the next shadow and then the next, not allowing them to raise their rifles to defend themselves. A quick jab to the knee, a punch to the jaw, and a stab to the heart. Dust. The next shadow was the recipient of a kidney punch, a blow to the back of the neck, knife to the spine. Dust. 

Now there were only eleven Shadow Nazis left. But they were rising faster than Jen could put them down. She began to kick away whatever rifles she could before they could be raised against her, as well as getting as close to the soldiers as possible to prevent their allies from opening fire in close combat. Still, the fight was anybody's game at this point. With Shego so heavily invested with the Bogeyman, Jen was forced to deal with the armed soldiers alone.

.....

Dave could hear the sound of combat from behind the trashcan he was hiding behind. He and Jen had always managed to come out on top in their previous scrapes, but they had never fought armed soldiers before, let alone Shadow Nazis commanded by something claiming to be the Bogeyman. He managed to peek around the aluminium canister and look out on the fight. Jen was apparently struggling with the Nazis, but was somehow managing to hold her own despite the difficulty of the fight.

But what was truly horrific was the... _thing_ Shego was fighting. She was attacking as if she were facing a humanoid opponent, but all Dave could see was a mass of shadows surrounding that horrid, purple and yellow eye that he saw in his vision back in Los Diablos. The same eye that hung in the sky back outside in the school grounds. And now it was here, right in front of him.

As Dave gazed upon the mass of darkness, he noticed that the eye inside the shadows was staring at him. It didn't seem to be paying Shego any mind. What little light that was left in the world seemed to recede from the area, and Dave felt himself suddenly suspended in an empty abyss with only that _eye_ for company.

Just like back in his Los Diablos vision, the inverted Y that served as the eye's central pupil began to open up, revealing rings of conical teeth. It seemed as if Dave would soon be consumed by the horror, but before the eye could advance towards him, a brilliant light shone from behind Dave's body. The eye hissed in anger as the sounds of chirping birds that could be heard in the approaching luminescence. 

A warm feeling of safety soon filled Dave's soul, soothing anxieties he didn't even know he had. And a soft, reassuring voice called out to him:

_“You are not alone.”_

.....

Shego could not land a single blow against the Bogeyman. Every strike she threw, he dodged like a dancing cobra. Her rage at this silent mockery continued to boil, fueling her attacks.

“One good hit, that's all I need!” she thought as she pressed forward with the onslaught against her hated foe.

Jen was almost through with the Shadow Nazis, but she was having doubts as to whether she could be any help against the Bogeyman once she was done. Not that it was going to stop her from giving it her all. But just as the last soldier dissolved into dust, a bright light began to shine from the other end of the alley. The Bogeyman stopped dodging at this strange new dawn, and Shego was able to finally land a solid blast to his chest, piercing her way through his torso clean to the other side.

“Yes!” Shego thought as her strike connected. Only to become quickly annoyed when she realized her hand was stuck. The Bogeyman was not even phased by this attack, however. He just kept his head focused on the blinding light opposite him, and merely asked:

**_“What are YOU doing here?”_ **

Dave had stumbled out from behind his trash can, his eyes solid white and emitting a shining glow. He made it halfway out into the middle of the alley before he began to float up into the air and was consumed by the light coming from his eyes. There was a burst of light that left everyone temporarily blinded, and by the time their sight came back, Dave was gone. In his place was the glowing white silhouette of a woman who was seemingly dressed in a heavy cloth dress.

Ms. Baum emerged from her hiding spot in the rubbish with a bewildered look of pleasant surprise on her face,

“Flora?”

** Author's Notes **

**So here is Chapter Six, finally! This one took a little bit longer to write as the current sequence of events wasn't planned out in advance. My primary editor pointed out that the narrative required the Group to get to know each other, so I had to come up with a few scenes to allow that to happen.**

**On another note, I will be taking a short break from Lingering Fear for a little bit. Not to worry, I haven't given up on it. I know what to write next. It's just that I got this amazing idea for a short story to serve as the sequel to A Possible Reunion. So I'm going to write that up and get it out of my system before coming back to this story.**

**Many thanks to my editor Diana for all her hard work and input into this project.**


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